


Glass Memories (Questions I can't ask)

by Coldest_Fire



Category: House of Night - P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast
Genre: 2019 so I don't have to deal with 2020, Bisexual Neferet, Camille gets a bit of a redemption arc, Everyone from Neferet's social circle in Chicago sucks, F/F, Her dad is killed off screen and appears only in flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Modern AU, Neferet probably has PTSD, Neferet's curse but modern, Panic Attacks, Panic attacks written by a girl with panic disorder, What her dad does is canon and is off screen but this fic deals with it a lot, canon character death, fledgling camille, no one dies who doesn't in canon, update: she definitely has ptsd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25721335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldest_Fire/pseuds/Coldest_Fire
Summary: The year is 2019. Neferet is marked, and taken to the Tulsa House of Night, in an attempt to flee her past, and the monster that lurks in the shadows of her mind.She tries to start over. New name. New life. New city. For all intents and purposes, Emily Wheiler is dead. For all intents and purposes, Emily Wheiler is the ghost on the edges of her vision.When the past won't stay dead, Neferet has to put it in the ground for once and for all. But can it ever be over? Can Neferet let down the walls she builds to protect herself, or will she become the monstress, not human, nor humane, but fit only to be entrapped in the cold ground, where her enemies still sleep.
Relationships: Neferet/Lynette Witherspoon
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	1. Prologue: Long Ago Before I Cracked

**Author's Note:**

> (Found spoilers in this a/n)
> 
> So hi, I have like 7000 unfinished works about Neferet. I think Cast&Cast did us really dirty on her relationship with Lynette, and the whole "just gals being pals" thing that they do, despite the imprint, and the declarations of love. 
> 
> So because Other Neferet, in found is able to redeem herself through love, and trust, and giving up the quest for power to protect Lynette, I thought, what if this all happened earlier? What if she wasn't alone? What if it was all happening now?
> 
> Half the Quote in the title, and the chapter titles are from Milk of Regret by Otep. Lowkey, I have a thing planned with my chapter titles, so keep an eye on them! The other half the quote is foreshadowing.

_May 1st, 2019_

I hope this is the last time I’m going to do this. My diary started as a document for some psych to case study, and then for an evidence locker. I had witnesses for everything he did that was visible. I wanted them to know I was not insane. It helped me in a sick way, to remind myself what I was feeling was real. So the usual updates: Last night, I watched the doorknob turn. 3:24 AM. It doesn’t hurt to keep documenting the times, at least until I’m out. While we’re at it, two nights ago, 1:48, and again at 2:31. When I get out, maybe my records will still help someone else convict him. I hate thinking about it, but I hope it’s just me he wants. Once I’m out of his reach, that means no one gets hurt. I’ll keep an eye out, just, not from close.

Someday soon, I'll actually get some sleep. 

Remember Arthur Simpton, who I threw myself at, who I kissed in the garden, like he was the last bastion of hope (probably because he's the fastest way out). We first kissed in March, and we’re engaged, as of tonight. It isn't like me to launch into something like that. If I was going to Uhaul, I should have started something with a lesbian. I guess uhaul bisexuals exist, or at least I do? Camille is definitely starting a rumour that I’m pregnant, as we speak, to understand the swift, scandalous engagement. Maybe it would be ideal to use that. Arthur would never believe it, or worse, he'd think I cheated. It would help our case, I just can't imagine sleeping with him. In my present situation, I can hardly sleep.

It'll happen, eventually. I'm not ace, I don't think. Just, I need this weight off my shoulders. The literal weight of the furniture I block my door with. I can't remember a time my arms didn't hurt just a little from the strain.

I think it's best just to think on the present. One day, none of this will matter. Right now, I'm at the world fair. My father, and his entire social circle just watched Arthur do the very stereotypical ring-in-champagne stunt, and get down on his knees and tell me I was the only one for him. That he’d known since long before we’d met. That when we were first in a room together, there was no one else. I am making the choice to believe him.

Believing is like stepping off the edge of a cliff and trusting an invisible force to hold you. I’m unsteady. I will fall in love with him as I fall back in love with my life. Love is a choice I think I can make for myself, and I am going to make it relentlessly, but not recklessly. 

The only damper tonight is this dress. Father decided I was too busy to choose my own dress, somehow? Even though I have dresses? I had one picked. Somehow I ended up in this green thing. It isn’t that bad, it’s just… well, they can see a lot of me right now. Doesn’t help the rumours. Is it wrong that wearing it feels like a violation? This fabric has hands and I wish they weren't on my skin.

When we move out, I’m going to burn it. But for now, I’m going to take my fiancé on the ferris wheel, call it my victory lap. And I’m going to take a decongestant, because god, my allergies are _killing me tonight._ It takes more than that to bring me down tonight. Finally, after years of waiting on bated breath, I know I will be safe. I'm going to make it.

For the last time (I hope),

Emily Wheiler _(Simpton!)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I'm working on finding her voice. this whole thing is like top 10 photos taken before disaster. 
> 
> the full line of the lyrics is "once was I made of glass/long ago before I cracked" which I think really describes the disconcerting, things are going to go to shit feeling this chapter leaves. 
> 
> Please note, the next chapter picks up on the way to the house of night, shortly AFTER she goes to Arthur and that shit hits the fan. There is no chapter written the night of may 1st that talks about what happened when she was assaulted. The how isn't what matters in this fic. The impact on her is.


	2. Chapter 2: Once was I made of Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Neferet is transported to the House of Night, and settles into her room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This went up at the same time as my prologue, and I have a second chapter in the works. Her dad will die in chapter 3-or-4, so that arc will end soon. Thank fuck. 
> 
> This chapter is bleak. It deals really intensely with the aftershocks of Trauma. It's going to get better, but this chapter is hard. The start may read weird, because outside of dialogue, I only use pronouns for her. This is becasue epithets felt too showy, but she has no signifier. She hasn't settled into Neferet, but she's not Emily. in an old draft, I call her that in a few places, but I took it off, because this is in her pov, and that's not her name. I don't know if cis people should use the term deadname--mixed reviews on the internet, and I'm not asking my trans friends about that for the sake of a fic, but either way, the name is dead to her, and it feels disrespectful for me, the writer to refer to her with it. 
> 
> So yeah, thats a piece of behind the scenes stuff. the title also comes from Milk of Regret, the other half of the first chapter's name.

_Once was I made of glass/long ago before I cracked?  
~Milk of Regret, Otep_

_May 2nd, 2019_

Trees passed by, shapeless green blurs. She had not spoken a word since chicago. She was not alarmed that the drive was to be nearly eleven hours. She didn’t have anything with her to distract her but the remains of the necklace, and the clothes on her body, if calling them clothes was a dignity they deserved. She was still wearing the green dress, and it was tighter around the chest than it had ever before felt, though her chest still hurt from the panic attack. The skirt was insubstantial, flowing to her mid thigh, currently crumpled beneath her haphazardly. It didn't feel like clothing. 

She’d tied the corseted front as tight as she could, both to prevent it from slipping, and to make it feel like she was dressed, even if it dug into bruises. The Tracker's jacket was the best she had to wear, her muddy bare feet on the seat, knees tucked into the jacket around her so that all but her head and neck were concealed by the dress.

“Do you want to stop at a hospital in Tulsa?” The tracker asked, not taking her eyes off the road. It was this again. She had her answer in Chicago, six and a half hours ago. Clearly she hadn't liked it.

She had no illusions about how this looked. She’d taken a wipe out of a package in the tracker’s console to wipe the blood off after they’d passed the city limits. It was particularly bad on her thighs. She fought as much as she could. The result was scratches. She wiped her entire body after, everything she could reach while buckled into her seat. The tracker saw the bruising on her arms and chest, and how it almost formed finger marks lower. The makeup tracked down her face, before she’d wiped it all off. She'd love it if she could wipe off her own skin. 

If Arthur hadn’t thought she looked human, what did the tracker make of her? Apparently a pity case, which was noxious. “Stop,” she hissed.

“Emily, I know… I know this is terrible. Everything hurts. I can’t tell you to do anything, but… They can find proof there. They can convict him, and he can go to jail long enough you’ll see him die behind bars.”

The tracker didn't know what she was talking about. He was rich, influential, and corrupt enough to have enough people in his pocket that this would be turned on her, and she'd be the one to suffer for it. She didn't have anyone in her corner, or a lawyer, or the money to seriously take him on. Even if, by some miracle, she got him convicted, he'd get a slap on the wrist. She didn't have it in her to talk about it—not for that.

She remained silent, until the tracker again called her by a name she wanted blotted out of the English language. “I am not _Emily_.” She didn’t know her name anymore, or who she was going to be. Maybe until she figured it out, the tracker should just _not_ refer to her. “And I am _not_ having this discussion with you. I am going to the House of Night, and that will be my final destination.” Her tone was so conspicuously level that the tracker could hear in it how much she’d have preferred to scream at her.

It wasn't fair for her to have to placate a fucking adult vampyre, before she'd even been able to get out of the dress. The scratches had barely scabbed. If it made the tracker so uncomfortable seeing it, maybe she should have stopped _looking._ Part of her wanted to slump into the jacket and cry, couldn't--not until she was alone. No one else could see her weaknesses.

The tracker left it at that, and she resumed staring out the window, trying to choose a person to become. Her former name was stained by his tongue, she needed a name he’d never spoken, would never speak. That ruled out any name in his employ, and anything common enough that he might have seen a retail staff member, waitress or other person stuck serving him with. No names of her friends. It was strangely freeing, ruling out everything she knew and letting herself become unknowable. It could not be a common word, which ruled out all the nature words that sprang to mind as she looked out at the world through the window.

She thought through everything she’d known about fledglings, and famous vampyres. One of them was called Nefera, and what she remembered of her was that she was a formidable defender in her tale. She protected her kind, and her people. A defender sounded good. Sounded like what she wished she could be.Nefera didn’t taste right. She mouthed it over and over, testing different changes to it. Neferia was worse. Nefara was not different, it was just a change in the spelling.

Neferet was the name she settled on, as she finally lapsed into unconsciousness, having been awake nearly 24 hours, as the adrenaline left her body with the immediate danger. She could no longer rage against sleep.

She jerked awake several hours later, almost leaping out of her seat. Her mind was as safe as her room, full of doors that opened, and oozed the stuff of nightmares and history. She could taste the reek of brandy. Her nails dug into her thigh, and the sting was enough to ground her in her body. She was not there. She was not with them. Only then did she hear her own breathing, raspy and erratic, like the calls of a beast in the night.

The tracker was conspicuously silent, when she sat so still it was as though movement would break the silence, and gingerly picked up her water bottle to take small sips. She was going to be sick.

“Emily…” the tracker finally said, hesitating.

“Neferet!” She corrected her, “Neferet is my name. Don't act like I'm still her,” she snapped.

“Neferet,” the tracker repeated, “that’s a change.” Neferet hoped she wasn’t legitimately stupid enough to think that wasn’t by design.

The silence persisted until the car rolled up to a building made of jutting black stone, encircled by a steep brick wall. It seemed secure. Neferet got up, tugging the jacket to cover as much of her as it could. There was a woman waiting for her, with blue-black hair, and another car pulling into the same side-street. The woman, whose tattoos resembled the mask from Phantom of the Opera, if Neferet looked closely enough, welcomed her Tracker first. “thank you, Alena. If you pop the trunk, I’ll have the sons of Erebus bring her things in.”

Neferet interrupted as the other new fledgling left the car, folding her arms. “I have nothing in the trunk,” she announced, and while the High Priestess, and the other new fledgling both stopped to realize she wasn’t even wearing shoes, she continued, “And my name is Neferet. Ignore any extant name on my paperwork,” she insisted. She'd barely gotten the words out when the other fledgling spoke.

“Holy shit. _Emily?”_ she demanded, incredulous. Neferet whirled on her, assessing what she was immediately. She was still in the light blue dress she’d worn out the night before, though it was creased from sleep and travel. Her makeup was still pristine, obviously touched up, her blonde hair in a loose ponytail.

The first to condemn her was Camille Elcott, over a man who would damn her anyway. Camille was the first to imply to Arthur that she belonged too much to her father for him to want to have any interest in her, and in the end, she was right. She wondered how many shades paler the girl would turn if she _knew_. “Camille Elcott. If you refer to me with her name after this night, I hope for your sake that Arthur likes girls in multiple pieces,” her voice came out cold, promising, rather than passionate.

The High Priestess interrupted, amending the papers with her new name, “Neferet Wheiler?” She asked.

The name turned her stomach. “Neferet. I don't want any part of that name.”

Camille stared at her as though she was speaking in tongues, but had no changes to her name, which allowed them to enter the House of Night. Neferet tuned everything out but the night air on her skin, and the effort she expended walking without a limp. Camille could not know. The high priestess seemed aware of the length of their journey, and lead them directly to their dormitories, across from each other.

“Neferet?” She asked, “would you come to the infirmary after you get changed? Perhaps there is something one of our healers can do for you?”

Neferet just disappeared into her room, and shut the door, hardly able to make it to her bed before Camille had opened the door. She lay down, and groaned, "get out of my room." She didn't have the energy for more than that.

“Em—uh, Neferet. _That’s_ going to take some getting used to. _What_ happened to you?" before Neferet could tell her how much she wasn't going to tell her, she kept going, "Were you and your tracker attacked? I know vampire-relations in Chicago are weird, and that High Priestess _hates_ your dad, but if they hurt you, he’ll be furious.” She sounded convinced, “I mean, you may be a fledge, but you’re his daughter first, and he’s not going to stand for some lackey of his—”

“Shut up, Camille,” Neferet cut her off. She was so wrong it dug its fingers into bruises she wasn't allowed to see. In Camille’s world, her father was old fashioned and protective, and would punish whoever hurt her. Her worst nightmare was that she was still his daughter, no matter how far she ran, or her new name and species. “I'm not his daughter. My name is Neferet. I’m not who I was. And I’m not your friend, I don't owe you a reason.”

Camille made a wounded sound. “Look, I’m sorry. I was just jealous. Arthur and I were supposed to happen, until you stopped moping and he met you. And I felt like you took that from me, and-”

“Take him.” Neferet said flatly. “Take Arthur. Take everyone from Chicago. Do not tell any of them where or who I am. Camille, after everything you did to me, just keep this name out of their mouths. That’s all I want from you.”

“Em-! Uh, sorry! Neferet! God!" Chamille tripped around with her words, "what happened? Basically 24 hours ago, you were engaged, and I was bitching about your Dress to Eve and Lizzy—I’m sorry, by the way, because if you want to do the like _own your sexuality_ thing, that’s you, but Eve thought it was a little off-base, given that you were like, getting engaged, but your dress was a lot more like, something you wear to get laid, and-”

Neferet could have strangled her. Her fists curled and she had to bite her lip to avoid screaming at her. “Camille, get the hell out of my room! I don’t want your apologies. I don’t care what you said. I'm not who I was when I needed you, and you're part of that. A small, insignificant part of it. I don’t want to forgive you, and I'm not going to tell you I'm fine. Get out of my room!”

Camille just shook her head. “I’m leaving, but I’m … Please just let me come talk soon? I don’t like that I was a part. Whoever you are now, you’re…” she just gestured to Neferet, as though what ever problem she was with her was plainly evident.

Neferet shook her head. “I’m going to sleep now. I’ve been in a car for eleven hours. I haven’t slept since the night before the world fair. Just let me sleep.”

She didn't tell her how impossible sleep had been for months. 

That seemed to be enough of a guilt trip that Camille got out of her room, sputtering about how she thought they should talk. Neferet didn’t want to speak to her again. Camille could not have stopped her father. She could not have made Arthur a better person. Neferet didn't think she could've saved her. She could have made Neferet less alone. She could have listened, when Neferet had no one to tell but a blank google drive document about her fears about her father, or after everything, when Arthur rebuked her, someone could have been there, in the coldness of the night, to be the only one that cared.

There was no one left that she could really talk to, and Camille could have been that. It almost hurt worse than Arthur. Her insincere attempts at finding out what was wrong—mostly so she could gawk at it—were salt in a wound. She was just another piece of the past that wouldn’t go away.

The other bed in Neferet's room was, mercifully empty, so she lay back on the mattress, slackening for a moment, before her eyes returned to the door. She got up, then locked it, set the deadbolt, and returned to bed. She’d hardly sat down, when he felt it like an itch in the back of her head. That door would not stay closed. People had skeleton keys, the high priestess had to. The bolt was easy enough to tear from the flimsy wood.

Her door could open. She could almost feel the silhouette in the door, outlined in the wood. Her skin felt somehow both hyperaware of the air around her and numb. She didn’t realize her breath caught until she got up. The nearest piece of furniture was the wardrobe. It was sturdy, probably antique. It hurt to move. _Walking_ hurt, let alone pushing, when every muscle in her body ached. She had to. She had to block the door, it would open. Eleven hours away.

Neferet knew in the back of her mind this was unreasonable,but it was easily overridden by her racing heart, and the visions of his shadowy form in her doorway back in Wheiler house. She wasn’t safe until the wardrobe overlapped the doorframe, at which point she slid down the side she’d pushed, and collapsed to the floor. She stayed there a while, feeling the coolness and smoothness of the hardwood with her overly sensitive skin like it was alien.

Once she’d accustomed herself to the floor, she curled up, tucked her legs in, and looked up at the wardrobe. Hot tears pricked the corners of her eyes, and for once she didn’t stop them. No one was here to see, but it was the one-person funeral for Emily Wheiler and Emily Simpton. Both could never again exist, both killed by those that had been and would be family. She vowed to never take a last name. No name but hers.

She sobbed out everything that had happened to her, all the hurt like a knife to the lung, slotted cleanly through her ribs. The fear that the wardrobe wasn’t enough. Nothing was anymore. She could hear herself, gasping and rasping. Her throat ached, and her ribs felt as though they were going to crack. Her whole body trembled and her vision blurred. She made no attempt to stop. Maybe it purged something out of her body.

Eventually, it subsided, leaving her hollow, and she pulled herself up, trudging toward the bathroom. She wanted to get it all off her. Scour a little more of the memory off her body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the next chapter, we're going to get into a flashback to her conversation with Arthur, before she was marked. I think it's going to be one of the roughest scenes in the fic, but we're getting by. 
> 
> Now, some other stuff, I do say in my notes, she probably has PTSD. Any knowledge I have of that is from my best friend, and an abpsych course. I'm not specifically trying to make her a character study in it, for instance, but you may notice things like paranoia, and flashbacks, and panic attacks. I do get panic attacks, so at least I can be realistic at those.


	3. Chapter 3: Heart of Ash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neferet's first day at the house of night, and her memories of her last night in Chicago. Her necklace is an old thing given new purpose, her ring discarded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was a little unsure of this chapter. I still don't know if the Arthur flashback feels Necessary, you know? Narratively, it's showing how she had to sever ties, and I think it exemplifies how selfish everyone in her backstory is. I don't tell anything in his PoV that isn't what she thinks he thinks, but I can assure you, like canon Arthur, he's freaked out, but rather than empathy, he's... disappointed? He was really, really attracted to her, and he only wants to help her in the ways that feel heroic, and get him something. He doesn't feel theres much to get from this. 
> 
> I do hope my contempt for him came out there. Also, I tried my best to describe the panic attack reasonably well, but also, I've never written down what I experience when I have them, so who knows how close I came to describing it properly. 
> 
> Arthur is not a character I intend to redeem. He abandoned her in her time of need in canon. most of the dialogue is inspired by the canon scene. He just sucks. But he's not a villain, so if theres any "revenge" against him, it'll be petty and minor.

_I'm starving for affection/Your heart is made of ash  
-Milk of Regret, Otep_

May 3rd, 2019

Neferet awoke in the early evening, after barely four hours of sleep. Her hair was still wet from the bath she’d taken before she slept. She didn’t want to be awake, but she was fortunate to have gotten any sleep at all. Even more fortunate that it was dreamless. She forced herself to rise and opened the doors of the wardrobe, pulling out a uniform. The shirt was black, with a swirling emblem over her breast. Too tight, of course, because they had to guess her size. She’d rectify it later, for now the jacket in the closet helped to hide it, in case a button popped. The pants fit, which was a relief. It was better than what she'd come in. 

Their last oversight was the shoes. Who ever had prepared her closet had assumed she'd have a pair. 

Before she was willing to touch the wardrobe, she located the thick concealer most fledglings used to conceal the tattoo on their foreheads, and used it to erase the finger marks on her throat. The pants covered the rest, and she had her shirt buttoned high enough there were only a couple on her chest near her collarbone she had to paint over. She did her best not to think about them. Nor the tangles in her hair from the struggle when she brushed it out. She had to look perfect, this facade had to be impenetrable. The other fledglings could not see.

A little resigned, she started to push the wardrobe away from the door. It creaked and groaned as she slid it just far enough she could open the door. No point moving it too far. She was panting by the end of it; her body wasn’t ready for this kind of strain. She took her time removing the deadbolt and unlocking the door.

Her first stop was the dining hall, where she forced herself to throw down a glass of juice and stole a few slices of toast. She didn’t speak to anyone, nor give anyone time to speak to her. She did not need anyone getting in her way, or anyone earning her trust.

No one tried to talk to her, not when she kept her head up, and walked as though she had a purpose. Somewhere to get to. No one had to know what each step felt like. Her next destination was close enough to the dining hall, the smaller “store” where the uniforms were kept. Her money—what she had from working summer internships—was in a bank account at a bank _he_ didn’t run, on a card he’d never heard of. She could pay them if she could get to a computer.

She picked out some clothes that would fit. Loose silk blouses, shirts that she could button. Clothes that let her look more like herself. The laptop they let her pay on returned to her room with her. Student-issue, a rental as long as she was a fledgling here. That suited her fine.

She ordered more from her room, things to be delivered to her. It was disappointing how quickly two summers of work disappeared into shopping carts. She had nothing from her last life. She needed everything from shoes to deodorant, to makeup. She refused to tell the school how much she _didn't_ have, as though trusting them even that much was unsustainable. 

Everything it took to look like a different person. She stopped short of dyeing her hair, after scrolling listlessly through pages of boxed dyes. The auburn colour was hers. It looked like her. She couldn’t stand to cover it up, however distinctive it was. She also decided against a phone. Her laptop was enough. It wasn’t like there was anyone she wanted to talk to. There were more pressing uses of the money.

Once that was dealt with, she got back up, albeit reluctantly, and took a couple painkillers. The longer she was a fledgling, the less they’d work on her, but she needed something to take the edge off, if she was going to be traversing campus. No one could have any inkling something was wrong. 

She took herself on a tour of the halls, picking up her books. She was certain the High Priestess had intended to assign her a mentor for that. Too late. She stopped by an art room, and selected some jewelry wire, and a clasp. If she was going to be different, so would her necklace; like her, it would get harder, sharper, and more capable of protection. Nothing touched her now. The wire, especially doubled, would work well enough as a weapon.

The High Priestess wouldn’t have to know the wire was selected as a weapon. She’d tell her she just wanted to create it again stronger.

If she was close enough to use it, whoever she strangled had earned it.

She packed herself some of the pasta they’d made for lunch to take to her room, not able to shake the feeling of eyes on her until she was back in her room, spooning pasta while sliding pearls over doubled-over jewelry wire. She tested the wire, watched it bite into her finger until the skin turned white and cold, prickling from the blood not reaching it. Then she released it, and felt the groove it left in her skin. She could kill someone with that.

It should have bothered her that she thought that, and didn’t react. There was no gut wrench, no horror, just the certainty that the pearls around her neck would serve as a weapon. She pictured his throat the same pallid white. His face turning shades of purple, eyes popping out. Her grip tightened on the wire. She wanted to feel him slacken, lose the fight. She wanted him to know powerlessness, and to see herself in his bulging eyes, see Neferet, a vampyre, someone powerful now.

She also never wanted to see him again, so it would stay a fantasy. But it felt like power. It felt like the kind of safety the wardrobe provided. She knew the truth. She was only safe when she created her own safety.

Once the pearls were strung, Neferet sealed the ends of the clasps, and fastened it around her neck. When the necklace first went on her body, it was an invasion. This time, it was her own weapon. It was hers now. She would make it hers. Maybe she'd do the same with the body that wore it. Turn it all to her power. 

When she started on the second half of the pasta, now cold and ignored, there was a knock at her door. “Neferet?” Camille called, “are you ready to talk? You’ve been avoiding me all day.”

 _And she’d avoid her longer_. She didn’t respond, opening the laptop, and logging into her email. One message in her inbox.

_Arthur._

She deleted it without opening it. She didn’t care about him, or how he felt, or what he had to say. He knew what he did.

***  
Arthur Simpton  
[RE: Apology][DELETED May 3rd, 2019]  
to: Em <3  
  
Hey Emily,  
  
I think I owe you an explanation for what happened a few days ago. I'm really sorry. I just...panicked. A lot was going on, and I froze. There were things happening that I just couldn't make sense of, so I wasn't really able to do more than freeze. I wish I'd been able to. Then the vampire was there, and I was just back to staring, and not understanding what I was seeing. You have to understand how much it all was, for all of us to try to take in. Your dad has your phone, so this is really the only way to reach you. He's flipping shit, Em. I didn't tell him I saw you, but he came to my parents place for dinner, to tell us you were missing, and then half-ransacked the place when they weren't looking trying to find you. He's lost his fucking mind.   
  
It was terrifying, being screamed at by a man I know is capable of...well, anything, because suddenly I was in the way of what he wanted. Especially because I didn't tell him I saw you, or that the vampyre lady left with you. Can things be okay between us? I mean, if I'm going to be risking probably my life to lie to him, can I at least know what I'm lying about? I don't like how all this ended, even if it was my parents, partly, that caused it, because everyone's even more up in arms now that Camille is a fledge. Is she with you? 

Can you write back soon?  
Arthur

***

Her feet hurt. She didn’t realize they hurt until she stopped running, but now that she’d stopped, it was all she could do not to collapse on the spot. She made it a few steps closer, when she encountered him. Arthur looked like a bastion of salvation, his glossy dark hair catching the moonlight as he flipped his keys in his hand. He had to have been on the way to visit her in the garden. Somehow, he was like an angel, haloed in the driveway lights, and she felt as though, maybe, this meant anything could be normal, could be okay. 

“Arthur!” She cried, stumbling a few steps closer before she collapsed to the bench on the side of his long, stately driveway.

Many things passed through his eyes, bewilderment, then recognition, then disgust, and apprehension. “Emily?” He asked, making his way over to her. He’d never seen her like this. Even when she escaped to the garden, she was well dressed, her hair smooth and silky. She'd tried so hard to be some idealized figure, so he'd go along with marrying her, and now she was a mess. Her hair tangled and wild, her body a mess of bruises and small cuts from the thorns, not even wearing shoes. The dress he’d so loved was barely on her body, the lacing haphazard, still looking like it was wrenched open. She could only imagine the makeup on her face, streaking off her cheeks and spattering the ground. More of her facade gone.

He knew exactly what happened, and thought, in all likelihood, that she’d ignored his warning about her father. “Arthur, it’s me, I—” she barely bit back a sob, her chest feeling as though it was held together as haphazardly as the dress above it, ready to crumble.

“What happened?” He demanded, his eyes wide, like he couldn't make sense of what he was seeing. Neferet knew the feeling. She’d told herself it was Mary in the house. She'd told herself she was safe, earlier in the night. That she'd truly gotten out.

She couldn’t get the words out to tell him, “father,” she rasped, her throat hoarse from screaming. She couldn’t say the word. She couldn’t tell him what her father had done. She bent over the bench, and threw up into his lawn, tasting acid and copper, and knowing that if she didn’t start breathing more slowly, she’d lose consciousness.

“Oh god!” Arthur blurted, but he didn’t get and closer to her, nor offer her support. He stared at her, fixed on the spot, adding up the sum of her injuries. The blood on her thighs, the bruises, the bites. It was humiliating, being seen, even by her fiancé, having him stare at what had been done to her. She curled her legs under the skirts of the dress, and her arms over her chest, making a plaintive sound, the closest she could come to words. Arthur, he had the words “he- oh dear god, Emily, he _raped_ you.”

He had the word, and he'd just thrown it into the air between them, irrefutable. Neferet hadn’t been able to say it, but Arthur had made her hear it. She hadn’t been able to hold in the tears. Her face was numb, her gasping breaths like some wounded animal come to expire in the bushes. “Arthur, _please_ ,” was all she managed. She needed something. His jacket to cover herself. His arms to steady her. She needed to be taken inside, and to clean herself up, and to hear her in-laws tell her that they’d ensure there were consequences, and her father would not walk away from this. That she'd never go back, and had a home here, somewhere she could be safe. That it was over.

She just needed to hear that it was over.

Arthur did no such thing. He stared at her, speaking words she couldn’t understand while she curled in on herself so tightly she could pretend not to be real. She was paradoxically very aware of her own body, and separate from it. The body was alien to her, except as a thing that could hurt. She stared at her knees, like mountains of flesh and bone, almost unable to comprehend that they were hers, the thoughts near downed out by the sound of her own gasped breaths, and the incomprehensible sound of Arthur.

She was hyperaware of what she didn’t feel. Warmth. Safety. There was no jacket to hide her from his eyes, and no arms around her to protect her. He didn’t touch her, he just stood and stared, like she wasn’t human.

When the tracker showed up, she sat with her, and took off her coat to put it over her shoulders. Neferet mistook her for Arthur’s mother, because they had the same hair, until she’d calmed enough to see the tattoos on her face. They whole time that a strange vampyre had tended to her, Arthur had been motionless, still tethered to the spot. When she looked between them, trying to comprehend what whas happening, who this was, the vampyre took her hands, "I need you to breathe," she whispered, "nice and slow, follow the sounds of my voice. 

The counted ins and outs, while Neferet choked gasps and sighs in time, until she was moveable to use her lungs. Still, Arthur stood, beside his car where he was when he found her. He had not moved.

Eventually a look passed across the vampyre's face, something strange. Her voice took on an edge, a kind of power, though she didn’t get up from the bench. Neferet wasn’t yet back to her mind enough to catch the words, but caught the tone, and then a sting at her forehead. The world went black.

His last words to her were. “Emily… You’re a freaking vampyre!” And while she processed this, he added, “I—I have to go. My—My parents are, they’re old fashioned, and a little racist, and you’re a fucking vampyre.” He couldn’t run away fast enough.

Her finger stung, ant it was coated in the stickiness of sweat and blood. Her fingers felt too big both the band that encircled one of them. For him. It was the only part of Arthur that had touched her the whole night. 

She dropped his engagement ring in the grass. 

***

“Dear diary,” she typed, fingers flurrying in a haze. “Everything I did wasn’t enough. I got sick. I got weak. I didn’t move the shelf. I don’t need to say the words. This is never going to evidence. No one is going to believe me. Arthur will not endanger himself to testify for me. He never loved me. I wasn’t the girl he wanted when I was hurt. Camille is with me, at the House of Night, eleven hours away. Even when I change my name, change my species, and sever my ties, something haunts me. One day, I’ll be stronger, and those ghosts will fear me.

One day, I want _him_ to.”

She ended it there. She didn’t want to to say any more. Once was more than she would ever deserve.


	4. 4: And You Were Just a Face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neferet falls into a routine at the House of Night, avoiding making any kind of connection with anyone. Camille has decided they're going to be friends again, but has to call Neferet on a hypocrisy in her logic first. Neferet discovers her abilities with minds, and then writes one more diary entry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact about this chapter, the date I chose for it worked perfect with the timeline in NC, but it's also my birthday (though I did Nothing special for it in '19). I just think it's really cool that it worked out that way. 
> 
> The end of chapter note is like a year long, so I'll keep this one short.

_...Your heart is made of ash  
_ _When you were just a face to me..._

_~Milk of Regret, Otep_

May 5th, 2019

Neferet's face was once again familiar. She wondered if that should have taken longer. The deep blue crescent moon in the centre of her forehead belonged there. The rest of her was still getting to be familiar. It still didn't always look like her. Her clothes had started to come in, and the school policy of “something has to have the emblem” gave her flexibility to appear as she chose. The bruises had begun to fade. Soon, she would carry no visible evidence of Emily Wheiler. She would be new.

For now, the pants, the loose blouses, the concealer expertly applied over her throat and chest, the glossy auburn hair and the makeup, all hid what her eyes could not. She could paint over the bags under her eyes, But she couldn’t stop them from darting across the room with every noise. She couldn’t hide the way she reflexively gripped the necklace when anyone got too close, nor the way, when she entered a room, she had to identify who was there, and how she could escape it. Her eyes exhausted themselves, whatever amount of sleep she got.

The wardrobe felt as though it was staring at her. There were furrows in the hardwood from her dragging it in front of the door every morning, the green dress buried under it, pinned beneath a wooden foot. Her eyes always found it, the start of the exhaustion. Perhaps it would get better when she could sleep uninterrupted through the day. Any creak of the furniture had her traitorous eyes once again cataloguing the room, while her hands felt for a weapon. It wasn't their fault, half the time she feared sleep as much as she needed it. Whatever lived in the corners of her mind crept out when she was alone inside her head. She played tv shows loud on her laptop when she slept, some sound to mask the creaks, and to distract her mind.

Sometimes it worked.

The past few days, she got up as early as she could bear to get breakfast, when the dining hall was near-empty, ate, and then went for a walk along the walls around the House of Night. Walking was good. She used to have a bike, but she had not budgeted for a new one, so for now, she completed the journeys on foot. She slowly got better, felt it less and less when she walked. Eventually, she wanted to be able to run around campus. That felt somehow safer than walking. Maybe it just meant nothing could catch her.

She would walk until almost the start of her class, occasionally slipping into the gardens near the temple to be alone. The only thing she'd ever be homesick for was the gardens, but these would do. She would steal fronds from the ferns and the occasional flower, to bring it to her almost austere, white-walled room. Perhaps, if she found a source of money, she'd buy herself a plant for it. 

After the gardens, she reappeared in class. She sat alone, and participated in whatever discussion was being had, but didn’t try to make friends, or talk with the other fledglings outside the relative safety of lecture topics. She didn’t want anyone close to her. Still, it hurt, watching them all congregate in the halls, hearing them talk of nothing, and laugh. Her inability to trust people didn’t mean she didn’t wish she could. It didn’t mean she didn’t sometimes fantasize about having friends again. It didn't mean she didn't imagine the girls from home, before they all turned on her at Camille's beck and call. Remembered what it was like to be able to share the things she felt. 

It just meant that it all stayed a fantasy.

Lunch, she grabbed fast, and then brought out to the gardens. If she walked like she had something important to attend to, the other fledglings got the message. By now, most assumed she didn't want to talk. She'd been here three days already, so she doubted very many of the others still had that altruistic impulse to befriend the new girl. Camille was there for that anyway. 

Then came the remainder of her classes, and she would go to her room after. She’d started reading whatever she could download, because she had distance from the people in the pages. She knew everything about them, but they didn't know her, or see her. They couldn’t reach her close enough to let her down, but they took the edge off the loneliness.

Her system was airtight, got her all the privacy she needed, but for one flaw: _Camille_. Wanting to talk was not an idle threat. Two days ago, when Neferet had tried reading in the library, she’d been ambushed, just like the following day, when she’d gotten breakfast too late. Her life wasn’t Camille’s business, not anymore. But Camille found her, knocked on her door, and redoubled her efforts each time she brushed her off. She was going to have to so something about her. 

May 5th was the first time they talked. Camille found Neferet just leaving the garden, at the end of her walk. “You always really liked the garden,” Camille mused, “I…that time you decorated the house, the flowers you picked were really pretty.”

Neferet didn’t like thinking about any of her time in Wheiler house, and those memories were so full of Arthur and her father that it was hard to see any part of herself in it. A dinner party, where she'd used them send a secret message to keep seducing Arthur. A dinner party her father insisted she had to prepare, and then he'd gotten drunk. She supposed, ignoring everything else she’d done well with the lilies. It was one of the more decent things Camille could mention, even if, at the time, Camille had committed to persuading the remainder of her friends of one of her latest rumours. “I have flowers in my room,” Neferet replied, with no inflection.

Camille walked a little closer, and sat down outside the garden, where Neferet begrudgingly joined her, not looking at her. “I… I feel really bad about how things ended, and about a bunch of the stuff I said, and for flirting with your ex fiancé, but you know that already, so I guess I’m repeating myself,” she said, with a little shrug, “and I know something bad happened. And I know I’m not going to know what it is, so that's the best apology I can give you—I don’t know what I’m supposed to be sorry for-”

Neferet’s patience--already thin from the lack of sleep, and from living on a hair trigger--wore increasingly thin. She wanted friends in the way some people want to live on a private island, or learn to fly, or live forever. Socrates said being consumed by desire for something you can’t have was like trying to fill a pot with a hole in it. Wanting friends was pointless; sitting with Camille was just another step in a vicious circle. She didn’t get up. “You know what _you’re_ sorry for. You were there for the part you played. You don’t know, and you _won’t_ know what it culminated to.”

She didn’t want Camille Elcott to own the sins of her father and fiancé. Just her own, and not just becasue of what they amounted to with everything that was bigger than her. Because what they amounted to was going through the worst of her life--the rest of her life--alone.

Camille shook her head, “I don’t know what that means, Em- _Neferet,”_ she said her name hurriedly, as though the faster she got it out, the faster Neferet would overlook her slip, “I never know what you mean anymore. You talk around me, and you get mad when I miss the point. I’m supposed to be sorry, and in the dark, and I’m supposed to remember when I’m apologizing, but not when you’re doing your whole new life thing, and I mention someone, or something. And I’m supposed to feel bad about trying to steal your husband, except not want to fix that, because I guess you hate him now. And this thing is bigger than me, but I was a big part, but I don't and can't know what I somehow collaborated in. I can’t regret stuff I don't know about! Am I supposed to know you, and be sorry, or not know you, and feel… whatever the heck anyone who meets you for the first time and by some miracle gets to talk to you would feel? What do you want from me, Neferet?”

It _was_ hypocrisy. Objectively, Camille had a point.

Neferet got up, pulled the hood of her jacket up and started to walk away. “Not a fucking thing.” 

The truth was, what she wanted was to feel like there was someone she could talk to. Someone who would support her. Camille couldn’t be that again, not after leaving her at Arthur and her father's mercy. She knew Neferet had suspicions about her father. She knew Nefereet's life was getting more and more confined. Camille left who she was alone with a monster. She let her die.

Camille scrambled after her, yelled to her, tried to talk her into turning around, but Neferet kept walking. This conversation was over, as far as she was concerned. Long after she’d tuned Camille out, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

Before she had tome to register who it was, or for that matter _where_ she was, her reaction was both violent, and instinctive. She tore away and took a swing at her, missing Camille. It had been aimed at someone taller. “Don’t touch me,” she snapped. Camille stood there, jaw dropped, and eyes wide. Her lips didn’t move, but Neferet _heard_ , somehow, in her voice, “she _really_ isn’t Emily anymore.”

She didn’t know what was going on, until she concentrated on the end of the hall, where her literature professor was standing, and fixated on her, hearing “should I go break that up, or is it over?” Her lips still did not move. 

Another fledgling that had been in the halls was thinking “what the fuck is that new girl?” It was the frist time he’d really seen her do something that wasn’t transitory: get food, leave, go to class, pass through class, leave.

She wished she didn’t have to know. She didn’t need to hear them. She didn’t need to hear that name, which she knew Camille still used for her, even before she heard it. She did her best not to think about anyone else in the hall on her way to literature, but it was like a sore tooth that she couldn’t help but probe. People were concerned, or speculated that she was some violent flavour of antisocial, or thought it was a shame she was like this. _You can’t stick your dick in crazy, after all._ The person thinking that was _lucky_ she couldn't pick them out of the crowd.

There throat closed, and her mouth tasted of copper and too much saliva, while her stomach clenched. If she stayed in this hall, she would vomit. She needed air. She ran past the crowd, back outside to the garden, where no matter how she probed, there was nothing to hear. She was surrounded in fronds of ferns, and hyacinths, and tulips that had just begun to bloom. The bench that held her was just a little ways into a group of trees with fragrant leaves and flowers which had not begun to bear fruit, and it was silent, blessedly silent. She clutched her head in her hands, curling up under the bench, and taking deep breaths until she was able to just feel the cool evening air on her skin, the damp moss under her.

However overwhelming, this was a gift. Nothing would ever catch her by surprise. No one’s intentions could hide.

She slowly got up, and tipped her head up to the sky, the crescent moon above her matching the one on her own forehead. _Nyx._

She’d never been one for gods. Whatever gods were supposed to save her failed her. This, this didn’t mean she didn’t still want to scream, didn’t still want to demand to know what had stopped her from marking her any other night. Any night _before_.

This gift, maybe it was an apology. Neferet certainly deserved one, if she’d have been able to save her. It was a good apology. It meant she’d always be able to save herself. She whispered, “thanks,” so softly, it barely left her lips, before she returned. The literature class was having a discussion of writing back, and she had an idea, if their discussion hadn’t yet moved on from Nagra.

*

May 5th, 2019,

If Seamus Heaney digs into his grandfather’s fields for connection, and Nagra has only himself to dig into, what am I digging furrows into the hardwood for? I'm digging to bury my family and their legacy. If it were fields, like Heaney's poem, I'd be aiming for scorched earth, salted fields, a burned out shell of a house. I can’t go back to the Chicago House. I don’t have his signifier in my name anymore. But Nagra is able to find the connection in his body. Nagra _digs_. Does this mean there is a tie as long as I have a body? Does that mean, this body isn't mine? The thought of it is too much. It makes me sick. I want my body to be something he's never seen. Is it enough that I'm not human? How far do I have to go to be new, and what is left to exhume?

Sometimes, I think too much. It’s 3pm, and I’ve awakened for the fourth time. Someone three doors down had a visitor. The door opened just before noon, and then once more at 2:45. Old habits… My door is blocked, tonight I am digging. They weren’t coming to my door. I still can’t sleep through the click of the door. Is the digging in my mind? 

I don't want to talk about it anymore. Another topic: today I had to confront that Camille doesn’t know what I want from her, nor do I. I want to be someone she’s never met. Then I'll have made it as Neferet. I want Camille not to know me. I want to be someone she’s never known. I want her to feel bad for what she did to the girl who ended in Chicago _._ I want her to understand that isolating that girl when her mother died, and her father was trying to drag her under contributed to her end and my _becoming_ _._ That she was alone, and her safest out was to try to run away with a guy who didn’t really want her. I want Camille to know how much she failed her, and to do better, in a friendship with someone who isn't me. But I can’t make her understand. Some words do not bear speaking. I shudder to think what would happen if she found out.

The door is closed. Maybe I can sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neferet, in the garden, makes the point of "why did Nyx not mark me any other night." Here is the thing about that. It probably wouldn't have saved her. If she was sick from being about to be marked, she wouldn't get the chest in front of her door, and we're right back where she started. in canon, before her mom dies, she's 15, which is just too young. Maybe there was a time in the future that would have been better, if not the night of the world fair. But from Forgotten and Found, in otherverse canon, we know Arthur has it in him to be just as bad (does main series Arthur? Who knows). So if they waited for Neferet to be married, it doesn't save her. If they chose a night that wasn't the world fair, before the marriage, same issue as if they'd chosen a night before. 
> 
> Yes, the night of the world fair was a perfect storm--she was sick, her dad was mad, the servants were out, but her doorknob moved another night. I doubt the servants being in the house would have made a difference. He has all the power over them, and it's his word against theirs. I just don't think a change of date would have made anything better. 
> 
> Extra note: the poems she references there are both called digging, by Heaney and Nagra. I did them in an English course. If you want to read them, they're both great. Nagra's contains a fairly vivid depiction of self-harm, as a warning.
> 
> Now! The last thing in this note, I've pre-written the next chapter. I'm excited about it. It's the start of the "Neferet has to kill her dad" thing, and that's going to be a two part arc. There will be chapter warnings on those chapters, and I'll tag it all onto the fic as well, if I have to add anything not already mentioned. but Shit Gets Real next chapter. And more real the chapter after.


	5. 5: I might be going down in flames

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neferet has a good time fencing, and then finds out that Camille, trying to make up with her, called her parents and asked them to send her her things. After learning her dad is on the way, Neferet has to make a decision, and prepare for what's to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't sure about the texts at the start, but I liked the epistolary (ie: using text from letters/messages/diaries) vibe I have from the other chapters, and this chapter didn't have space in the narrative for something like that. Also like it because you get to see how different Emily was, even just in the way she talks. 
> 
> This chapter is the start of the murder plot, the murder happens next chapter. Neferet does have a panic attack in this, so if you're in a place where you might also have one, be careful. Also, wasn't counting on Camille being so supportive, but like, I want Neferet to have friends. One thing that was really prominent in my Found ending rewrite was that Neferet hadn't trusted anyone (not emotionally, at least) for like 126 years by the end of that book. And fuck that. I'm giving her friends. Watch me aggressively add in friends. 
> 
> Another thing. My personal belief is that both Arthur and her dad suck, and in the main verse, her dad is worse, but in the other verse, Arthur is. I am writing Arthur like he's a selfish dick, not the monster he becomes in the Otherverse canon. My personal head cannon is that he would also have mistreated her in this characterization, but more becasue he wanted her as some like, beautiful girl he wanted to think he saved, and wanted to fuck. he'd have been a shitty husband, but not a traumatic experience.

**Chapter 4:**

May 7th 2019,

***

May1st, 4:52 pm

Arthur: Are you sure this is gonna work?

Arthur: like he looks pissed, already. Something up?

Arthur: Em?

Emily: please. He can’t do much with everyone here

Emily: I just need out of this place

Arthur: here goes. If anything happens, I died a hero xx

May 1st, 8:32 pm

Emily: you were really brave. Thought he was going to explode

Emily: thank you for that. Congrats, hero

Emily: can your mom give me a lift? I’m so sick rn, and I can’t ask him

Arthur: does this mean I get a hero’s welcome next time I leap the fence?

Arthur: jkjkjk,,,,, unless,,,,

Arthur: as hero of the night, mom’s ready to go. Your carriage awaits

Emily: as hero of the night, I think a welcome could be arranged once I’m not about to drown in my own lungs ahah. You’re even more of a hero for getting me home!

May 2nd, 2:12 am

Arthur: Emily I’m kinda freaking out are you going to be at the hon in Chicago?

May 2nd, 11:46 am

Arthur: your dad is on rampage

Arthur: my dad is ready to rip him a new asshole. We caught him searching the basement. Drunk off his ass ofc. Mom’s doing the mad silent thing.

Arthur: okay your dad just screamed at me. Thinks I’m hiding u?

Arthur: fuck. Is that your phone in his pocket? Test message.

May 7th, 12:02 AM

Arthur: So if you’re in Tulsa, I have bad news

***

Fencing was likely Neferet's favourite thing about the House of Night. It felt good to move now that she’d recovered a little. There were still bruises, but she was mostly moving like normal, and using her foil well enough. It was catharsis, getting to spar with someone. Feeling the kind of power of having a weapon. There was something about the sword in her hand that felt safe, even when facing off with another fledgling with a sword. She was not nearly as skilled as one of her peers—they called him Dragon, and his foil was functionally a part of his body—but she had a talent for it. Fencing was her way of turning off her thoughts, and her ability to react fast was an asset, and not something exhausting she had to try to tune out.

After an hour or so, her muscles were a good kind of sore. Sore from stretching, and flexing, and _dancing_ , sword in hand, with an opponent, but her mind was quiet, for once. It felt right, and it made her hungry for a decent meal after. She had a bowl made up, meat, mashed potatoes, pretty much the basics. It was easier to tolerate being in the dining hall, knowing how few thoughts were about her. “Is she going to take _all_ the dill potatoes?” Was the most targeted thought that she could hear. She virtually didn’t exist, and as lonely as it was, it was safe. No one was waiting to catch her in a moment of weakness. No one thought much about her at all. Another girl wondered where her shirt came from, as she left.

She was a ghost. No one would know if she was there or not. No one thought enough to look. She was also closer to alive, walking more in her mornings, weeding the garden, fencing. She was the only one that could see it, but it was enough. She had started to find things, moments, experiences that belonged to Neferet and not who she was _._

It _should_ have been a night like any other. Her door was unlocked. She froze in the doorway when she realized, and then pressed herself into the wall, moving as silently as she could while her eyes scanned the room. She could hear footsteps in the gallon the floor above her. The muted noises of thoughts, or voices. Her walls were blank. Nothing in the translucent curtains, which were pressed firmly to the wall. Doors closed on the wardrobe. Bed still made as it was in the morning. Laptop closed on the desk, where an array of writing implements were carelessly strewn.

Someone had been in here. She knew it. She’d taken to leaving her dirty laundry on the floor, in a particular system of piles that she would cross the bed to avoid waliking through. It meant less work doing laundry. It was something she’d started doing in Chicago, so she’d know if she was alone in her room.

The piles had been pushed to the wall.

Her hands curled into fists, as she silently set the bowl of food on the desk. Under the bed. In the wardrobe. Bathroom door was ajar. She crept along the wall toward it, and chanced a quick glance into it. Bathtub empty. No one in the shower, nor at the sink. Towels on the floor hadn’t been disturbed. She bolted for it, running on the balls of her feet, as silently as was possible, and then pressed herself against the wall to the side of the doorway, breathing as shallowly, and as little as she could, to avoid giving herself away. Bathroom was a bad call. No exits, se realized, glancing at the window. She was on the second storey. She’d at best escape with broken bones, unless she could fins something to climb. She’d call that plan B. Plan A, she clutched in her bloodless hands, the wire and pearls leaving indentations in her fingers.

There were footsteps on the first floor stairs, loud and careless, tromping closer, closer, down the hall. She had not locked the door—she needed to be able to leave fast, if there was an intruder. “Fuck, this chick has too much shit,” she heard an exhausted male voice, while another made a sympathetic noise. “How’s she even going to fit it in this dorm?”

The other man shrugged, as Neferet saw him enter with a large cardboard box. “Rich people, dude. Where there’s a visa, there’s a way.”

When the other entered, she could have fainted. In his arms was a battered old chest, the paint of the back of it peeling, the leather handles well worn, and blackened with time and wear. Locked at the front, with a combination lock that had a small green sticker on the side, so she knew which combo it was.

That was the chest she’d used to block the door.

Then, behind the bed, she noticed the boxes on the other side of the bed. Cardboard boxes with the wrong name, sleeves and pant legs and the like spilling from them. She stormed into her room, her voice feeling foreign, too high, too loud as she glared up at the movers. As she began to process the situation, she demanded “what in the fuck is all this?” She demanded, “who sent you?”

One mover shrugged, “delivery for your roommate or something. Emily Wheiler. Her dad gave us a huge tip to get it here fast,” he laughed, setting the chest on the ground. “Calm down, we just had to get your laundry out of the way, so we could get her stuff on her side of the room. We didn’t take anything.”

Neferet did not have words, at least not before the movers had left. Her shaking hands ripped open the cardboard top of a box, not bothering to cut the tape. Her clothes. She knew that sweater, those pants, the dresses she used to wear out with Camille, dancing. Several of her mom’s nicer dresses. She dropped the sweater as though the strands of wool bit her fingers.

She ripped open the next one, and the next one, as though one of them would have some kind of sign that this wasn’t really hers, wasn’t really happening. At the top of the last box was her phone, nearly dead, but with enough charge that she was able to plug it in to see texts from Camille from May 2nd—all asking where she was and if they could talk soon. After that, she must have figured out Neferet didn’t have her phone. The there were the Arthur texts, which accumulated over days. She wondered where he’d thought her phone was that night. He’d stared long enough he remembered what she looked like better than she would ever want to. She ignored everything he said until she reached the current date. “So if you’re in Tulsa, I have bad news.” Then a second message, “somehow he found out. He got on a flight probably a couple hours ago, according to my parents.”

She dropped the phone, watching the screen become a myriad of green garden foliage and spiderweb cracks, and backed away from it like she expected the spider. She took a sharp breath, shoving the chest into the door hard enough she dented the wood, and then collapsing onto it, her lungs constricting with an ugly sob. She could arrange a transfer to another house of night, but how long would that one last? How long until he found her there? New name, new species, new city, none of it was enough. _Nothing was going to be enough._

She could smell rancid breath and brandy in the air, feel him in her airways when they contracted. The bruises on her throat prickled. There was no air left in this room, nothing to breathe. She was going to die in this place, but it meant he’d never get his hands on her.

How had he found her in the first place? The answer dawned on her almost violently. “I’m going to fucking Kill Camille,” she snarled, shoving the chest away from the door and across the floor, and slamming the door behind her, and storming towards her door. She should have felt her fists battering Camille’s door, loud enough that doors opened along the hallway. When the door opened, she barged in, and demanded, “what the fuck did you do?”

Camille’s jaw opened and closed, not processing what she was seeing. “Neferet, I-” she started but Neferet didn’t give her room to speak.

“All I asked of you, all I asked for the months you spent telling people every lie you could think of about my life, all those friends I never got to see again, all the times I was alone, because Arthur Simpton was worth more to you than staying friends, _fuck,”_ Her voice broke for a moment, and she turned away, pacing like a wild animal in a cage, “that night that I was alone—all I asked of you was to let them forget me. I just wanted to start over. Why?” She demanded, tears streaming down her face, when she finally turned to face her.

“Neferet, you’re scaring me,” Camille took a step back from her, “I know you didn’t want to talk to him again, but I thought…”

“Thought what, Camille, thought changing my name, and leaving the state and all my shit behind meant I was ready for him to be here?” she seethed, “thought I wanted my phone and some clothes more than I wanted to be left the hell alone?”

“I thought I could help,” Camille’s voice was small, “so you could feel normal again, and maybe we could be friends.”

Neferet could hear the fear in her voice, along with the guilt. It was no good now. She had to get out of here before he caught up. She had to buy herself some time, any time she could get. She had to disappear far enough he couldn’t reach, though she didn’t have the money to buy a plane ticket. She shook her head, disappearing out of Camille’s room as abruptly as she’d entered, slamming the door behind her, then bolting it, and testing the lock. Not enough. She yanked the wardrobe over the door, in one violent move that nearly toppled it onto her. It could have killed her, and she registered that, but felt nothing about it. If it had fallen, then this was over. He lost. She pushed her back against it, head between her knees, taking breaths of some kind, and watching her vision blur. She rasped, and gasped, twisting the string of pearls around her finger.

She watched it turn alien shades of purple and red and pallid empty white. The wire bit into her flesh and came away slightly bloody. It had changed. It would not break a second time.

She stood up, and staggered to the bathroom mirror, pressing her forehead against the cool glass, and closing her eyes. When she’d caught her breath a little more, she looked down, and then ran the sink cold, filled it, and submerged her face. When she pulled out of the water, the shock was just enough that she could almost think. She took a washcloth, and very deliberately wiped the concealer from her neck and chest. Purple finger marks, like a proper crime scene. She knew what she’d find under her clothes: the bites had scabbed. Some of the bruises were starting to yellow, but it was all still there.

She didn’t feel like Neferet when she had to see it. She forced herself not to look away, staring into her own eyes until either she or the glass would crack, her image warping and twisting as she watched but didn’t’t feel the tears on her face. If she did nothing, and waited here, then nothing would be different. She would not heal. Her only shot was the authorities, though who’d believe her? He had power she didn’t. All it bought her was a little bit of time, until the court case was dismissed and he found her again. No distance, no barrier, and no human or vampyre could protect her now.

Her only shot was death. The necklace turned to lead around her neck. It flashed though her mind, how easy it would be. She turned away from the mirror, and dressed, in thick jeans, and a long sleeved sweater, the same shade of green as the dress. It covered her chest. She needed to be armoured. Pulled her hair back, and the pearls forward, and stared into herself.

_“One day, I’ll be stronger, and those ghosts will fear me. One day I want_ him _to.”_ She remembered the fantasy: his throat staining with bruises and blood. Eyes bulging. Body slackening. Powerless. She tugged sharply at the necklace, feeling the pearls, and the wire, but no sign of any give. He’d killed her once. She was not going to wait for him to do it again. The best thing she could do now was to catch him by surprise. If he wasn’t ready, she could get the upper hand. Get the noose around his neck before he could touch her.

Everything was too fast—her jittery hands fetching her phone, and unlocking it. Texted Arthur, “Camille told him. Thanks for covering. He wants to settle things.”

Her words were too cold, it wasn’t enough. He needed to think she wanted this. She’d need the evidence. “I’m meeting him somewhere with witnesses, don’t worry about me. I can’t ever come back until I know it’s really over. I think, if he apologizes, maybe it can be. I want my world back.”

Another pause. It wasn’t enough to persuade the same self-centred man who’d stood and stared at her. She needed something in it for him, that would make him think less critically about what she was saying. “I want our lives together back, the way things were,” she added, as though she could stomach the thought. Wrinkling her nose, she pocketed her phone. She needed it to track her, in case this went wrong.

Next stop was Camille. When she knocked on the door, Camille was crying. Her face was red, and blotchy, probably almost as much as Neferet’s. “Hey, Camille, I’m sorry,” she forced herself to talk slowly, to hide the tremor in her hand. “I-I had a panic attack, and I overreacted, and I took it out on you,” she explained. All of it was true.

When Camille stood still, and didn’t say anything, Neferet offered her a hug. Her hands on her body felt wrong. Too close to her body. She stopped breathing when Camille touched her, and then let herself in. She had to perform as who she was. “You wanted to know what changed me, right?” She asked, sitting on Camille’s bed, while Camille sat mutely beside her. “My father and I had a fight. The kind where things get out of hand. And neither of us are people that admit when we’re wrong. He thought I was abandoning him, because of Arthur, and that I was too young for marriage, I didn’t want him dictating my life-”

Camille’s hand migrated to her shoulder, as she said, uncharacteristically quietly, “he did all that, didn’t he? You weren’t attacked,” she volunteered. Neferet had to tread carefully.

“Most of it,” Neferet agreed, “he was drunk, and when we fought, we were on the stairs. I fell, and he threw some of my things after me. I- he told me that if I crossed that threshold, I wasn’t his daughter anymore, and I told him I’d never wanted to be. I thought he meant it so I changed my name. I honestly…I thought he’d have burned my things.” She looked at Camille earnestly. “Then Arthur and I had a fight, and he wasn’t willing to let me stay with him. I had nowhere to go until the Tracker…so I decided I couldn’t stay the same. That person had nowhere and no one left.” And that was the most truthful thing she’d told her since Chicago.

Camille gasped, “Neferet!” She covered her mouth, before once again, her arms were around her. Neferet stiffened, and she let go.

She had to downplay it more, so Camille would want her to go reconcile. She had to think she’d done the right thing. “I…he was drunk, and I said some terrible things. I just—Camille, all week I’ve been trying so hard to just be someone else, and I’m so tired. I want my family back. I want to talk to Arthur. I-” she paused, letting Camille reach the conclusion as she said it, “I think this is the chance to make things right.” She said slowly, trying to let Camille reach her conclusion.

“Do you think he’d hurt you?” She asked quietly.

Neferet shook her head, trying another way to persuade her. “He hadn’t before. And he didn’t get…bad, until I accused him of trying to pretend I was my mother. It doesn’t justify him, but I’m not proud of what I said. I want an end to the animosity. He must feel bad, because everything I owned looks exactly as it did when I left,” she ad-libbed, “he didn’t throw anything else.” When, invariably, Camille told this version of events to the officer, Neferet would tell them she was trying to spare her the truth.

Camille patted her shoulder, again not noticing the way her breath caught, or the tension in her body. “My…my dad told me where he’s staying, and that he said he wanted to make things right with you, or that something needed settling? He wanted you back as his daughter…”

Neferet bit her lip, her mouth filling with saliva and the taste of copper, swallowing it all down as it filled. Wanted her back. Wanted to settle…

_Awake, are you? Good. You need to be. We have things to settle between us._

Her nails dug into her thighs, but she could hardly feel them. She could almost feel the words in her, inside her head. They felt sick. She curled in on herself, sparing precious seconds to gasp for air, covering her face.

It was all she could do not to swing when she felt Camille’s arm around her. She was silent until she could see sure she wasn’t going to throw up. It had to be over. This was why she had to kill him. “Sorry,” she excused herself, still covering her face, “I’m just so _relieved.”_

While Camille stared at her as though she was losing her mind, Neferet tried to get as much of a breath in as she could, before continuing, “I just…I didn’t think I’d ever be able to make things right, and get my life back,” and those words, spoken breathlessly, she said with all the sincerity her relief lacked. She had to kill him to live without flinching at every door, looking for him in shadow. He deserved to die.

“Am I a part of the life you want back?” Camille asked, “I think I get it now…” After a moment of silence, in which Neferet wondered what she meant, Camille filled in, “the fight with your dad, and Arthur, that was all so much at once,” she paused again, seeming to pick her words, “and then becoming a fledgling? It…that’s a lot, and you thought you had to do it alone, because of all the drama over the Arthur thing, and me acting like that was more important than our friendship. That’s what you were mad at me for.”

Neferet was shocked for a moment. She’d never thought Camille could understand her. She’d felt she’d become unknowable to anyone from her last life. Burn that bridge, and never look across the chasm. Camille was too stubborn. She was the one who landed Neferet in enough danger that she had to kill a man. It just felt significant that she figured out what Neferet had needed. Part of what she’d lost. “…Yeah…” she admitted, before her mind caught up with her mouth. “And I know I’ve been…honestly, I’ve been cruel to you, but I want to be friends again. You’re the only person who knew me before that I know I can still count on.”

She told herself it would air better in court. She couldn’t afford to trust her. Somehow, the pretence felt like something else. Right now she needed to not be alone, in case she lost her nerve. Camille was a known quantity, better than having a stranger with her. She could pretend this didn’t have to happen alone.

Camille smiled, “do you want to meet me in the dining hall once you’ve gone to see him? We could talk a bit more about everything. And I could drive you, because I have my car, and plan on coming back in like an hour or so, or when you text me,” she offered.

That was better than Neferet had expected. She wouldn’t have blamed Camille if she needed time, or if she was just through with her. This felt strange. She didn’t give up. But it put a witness at the scene who she knew would take a favourable interpretation of the circumstances. “I have to go make a couple more stops—tell the high priestess where I’m going and stuff, but I think I’d like that. At least if you drove me there, and then he can drive me, or I can cab home.”

No matter how useful she was, Neferet couldn’t justify how traumatic it would be for Camille to see the immediate consequence of inviting him. She was trying so hard to make things right. In any normal situation, she would have. However selfish she’d been in Chicago, she didn’t deserve murder on her conscience.

She agreed to meet Neferet in 20 minutes out front, and Neferet disappeared down the hallway, the tremor in her hands returning. Running felt good, felt like movement, momentum. She could still hardly stand to be under her own skin.

She made it to the High Priestess first, and knocked on her door. “High Priestess,” she called, “I’m going out,” and when the woman opened the door, she forced herself to take a deep breath. “I- My father is in town, and I want to make things right. I’m going to talk to him. Camille is driving me, because my car hasn’t gotten here yet, but I think he sent my things as kind of a peace offering.” She spoke fast, as if she was doing something that shouldn’t have been a big deal, but needed her to authorize leaving campus.

The High Priestess seemed apprehensive, “do you think you’ll be safe to go see him?” She asked, “I saw you when you came in.”

Neferet shook her head, “I’m going to call him down to the lobby, into a restaurant. He’s the only family I have,” she half-plead with her. She would never put the abstract of family before her own safety, but let the High Priestess think she loved him. Unlike with Camille, she had the presence of mind to try to eavesdrop on the her thoughts—hard to access, but not impossible. The High Priestess wanted to stop her. Felt almost certain she was naive, and was going to get hurt. That was good.

It never hurt to be thorough. Neferet added, “what happened was bad, and it was once, and I want it to be over. It’s never going to be over if I don’t get to hear from him that what he did was wrong. Camille says he told her he wanted to make things right, and for me to be his daughter again. And he doesn’t normally admit when he’s wrong like that,” she offered, “if it goes well, I was wondering how hard it would be to change my name a little again. Not back to the other name, but I might want my last name back,” she tried to get the High Priestess thinking she was that optimistic. She’d be doing the opposite. His last name would be dead after tonight.

The high priestess sailed warmly, “be careful, Neferet. I think a lot of good, or a lot of ill could come of this, but you’re a better judge of your circumstance than I can be. The name change is a hassle, but I could arrange it, if you need. It wouldn’t be the first time,” she offered.

Neferet nodded, “okay. Thank you, High Priestess. And is Professor Moore still in the art room? My necklace, here, was my mother’s. It broke when I left. I want to give it back to him. I know the loss has been hard for both of us, but maybe it makes a reasonable show of good faith?”

The High Priestess was at very least convinced of her altruism, if not her apparent lack of common sense, and directed her to the art room, where she fed the same story to Moore, who barely had to adjust the crimped seal behind the clasp on one side. “This wire is very strong,” she commented, “I might have done a thinner wire if you were looking for it to hang right though,” she suggested.

Neferet smiled, “he’s more likely to frame it. I just needed it to be durable, because last time it broke was a bad memory for both of us. It just feels like we need to build what we broke again stronger,” she suggested.

That placated the professor enough that she was sure it would make it back to whoever investigated the case. It was all about establishing credibility. When cops came asking about the murder weapon, and found out it was supposed to be a gift, hopefully, it looked less as though she’d built her necklace into a weapon. She was not spending this life behind bars for him.

Camille was ready to go when she got to the door, she’d even rolled her car up to the door.

For better or worse, this was the point of no return. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah. Next chapter starts without the epistolary element, but with a short flashback. There will not be anything graphic. This is about Neferet and how all this affects her, and not about the gory details, so don't worry about that. 
> 
> And then the chapter after, Lynette gets introduced!! So lots to look forward to!


	6. You'll wish We Never Took This Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Camille Drives Neferet to the hotel to finally get this over with. She tells Neferet that she's got support even If her dad sucks, and that what she felt mattered. Neferet establishes her alibi with the front desk, and then goes up to face him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. 
> 
> This chapter was one of the hardest to write in terms of writing decisions. the first thing was the flashback at the start of the chapter. I don't know how long the final version of It will be, but some part of the start is a flashback to when her dad entered her room, after the world fair. I intentionally started the fic after she got out, and I actually intend to pick up next chapter after the murder, and only flashback to him. I don't like having him present in it. I don't want this to be about what he did, I want it to be about her. 
> 
> To skip a flashback that happens just before the assault, but ends before it, skip to the asterisks after the first section. 
> 
> Next, more a point of interest, but the time of night in the flashback, and when she opens the door, 131 is the page number of the scene in my copy of the novella. I remember because I told my friends so they knew when to expect it. 
> 
> Finally, theres the paralleling between his dialogue at the start of the chapter, and hers at the end. She has the power now. I think that's my favourite reason to include the prologue.

_1:31 AM._

_“Awake, are you? Good. You need to be. We have things to settle between us.”_

The click of the doorknob turning awoke her before he spoke, and her breath caught in her throat, wheezing out. Her chest felt as though her lungs were full of sand, her head light and spinning, filled with the sounds of her heartbeat in her ears. Her eyes flicked across the room to see the source of the voice. At first, she couldn't understand what she was seeing. The door was open. Dim hallway light, and the reek of brandy flooded the room, from behind a tall silhouette, braced in her doorway. a shadow that leered down.

_How was it open?_

Her eyes shot to the chest that usually blocked off the door, shoved against the wall, where she'd left it. She was not strong enough to move it while sick. She was not strong enough for much that night. 

_“Mary?”_

A harsh laugh dispelled her last hopes of a feverish delusion. Her wide eyes watched the shadow creep to the bed. _"Mary,"_ he drew her name out, "is out tonight. I've had enough of her interference, Emily." 

He called her by her name. Somehow, that was worse. He knew who she was. He didn't mistake her for Alice, as he had in March. She'd known then what he was capable of. All these months she'd been blocking doors, hiding her body, slinking through the night for rare respites. She knew what kind of monster staled the halls of Wheiler house. She wouldn't let him do this. Her head throbbed as she pushed herself from the bed onto unsteady legs, the silken skirts of her dress falling like crumpled leaves around her body. She nearly capsized, but she'd always been determined. She'd always been good at protecting herself. 

She bolted for the door, a mess of rasping breath, and clumsy limbs that felt too weak to hold up her sand-filled lungs. She almost made it. His hands were fast, iron gripping. She felt her body hit the wall before she registered where she was. Her heavy lungs did not have any force left to scream, with a hand wrapped around her throat.

***

Camille’s voice was almost soothing, even if Neferet couldn't listen. She surreptitiously didn’t mention Neferet’s father, in favour of telling her about her own life at the House of Night. It was normal, in a way that called back to when her mother was alive. Camille didn't expect responses, she just talked, and Neferet gave her the occasional nod, and clenched her fists in the hem of her shirt, trying not to tear through. 

She jerked the necklace harshly, reassured by the way the wire bit into the back of her neck. She couldn’t let go of it. Her skin was numb, heart trying to ram through her ribcage.The wire biting into her neck was real, in a way her thoughts couldn't be. It cleared her head enough that she could see out. 

“…Super into you. Like, Liv kept asking questions about you, and everything. I mean, she was _really_ overt, Neferet. It’s kind of cool, actually, because they’re really open about all that here, and like, that's probably way healthier than how humans are all weird about it. Almost everyone I know is some type of gay…”

Neferet didn’t respond. Someone thinking of her that way wasn't uncommon by any stretch, but with everything else going on around her, it was uncomfortable to imagine being with anyone, especially right now. At least Camille's soliloquy was a distraction. She let go of the necklace, seeing a thin reddish purple line on her neck, in the rearview mirror. She flipped up the collar of her coat, to cover it. They had to think he did that. It was about to be evidence. Her fingers tingled, and she tried to hear herself breathing, to make sure she was. Did she still breathe? She felt as though that was a thing real people did, and wasn't sure if that meant she did.

“…So, anyway, I didn’t know he had a twin, and so when his twin sat down, I demanded to know where he’d been and he was like, ‘uh, Canada?’ And I thought he was being an ass until…”

How long had she been out, for the topic to have migrated this far? She could feel her breath through her chest, like it filtered in between the ribs. Carefully, to avoid alarming Camille, or drawing attention, she pulled the necklace back, feeling her breath catch, and then stop, testing it quietly. Camille didn’t look. Her mouth was still moving. Neferet watched her own face in the rearview, made of shapes and colours she'd never seen. The deep blue crescent moon. Her eyes, almost bulging, green. Lips, parted with breath that wasn’t coming, pale. She was engulfed by her hair, shrouded in blood. As she released the necklace, she saw the reddish purple line across her throat this time.

She looked like a woman fighting for her life. She was.

“…so we’re in vamp soci, and she blurts out ‘so are we all just expected to get a blood kink or die?’ and I’ve never seen a prof so tired.”

The buttons on her coat went up and down, slipping in and out of their holes, surfacing and disappearing at the call of bloodless fingers. She tried to anchor herself in what Camille was saying, but she was under water in her own head, and Camilles words were sunlight that barely made it down that far. She only saw them Shen she could catch a breath.

Camille fell silent, and Neferet didn’t realize until she registered the car wasn’t moving. Her face and hair were washed in red light from the intersection, and she’d turned to face her. “Neferet?" She asked, obviously concerned, "are you sure you want to do this? You seem….”

She was so grateful Camille didn’t add a descriptor to that that she didn’t go fishing for it in her mind. She seemed like a death row inmate, being walked to the firing squad and counting on someone else to die. She needed Camille to believe she didn’t think she was in danger. “I just… I want things to be normal again, Camille. If this goes badly, that's gone.” In a way, it was true. If this went badly, she would never be safe again. She'd be dead or worse. 

Camille shook her head, and offered her a half smile, “you can have our kind of normal,” she tried. “He’s one guy, and he tries to be an important one, but he’s not everything. He wasn’t your whole life then, and he isn’t now. And he doesn’t ever have to be,” she insisted, “Neferet, I don’t know who you are these days—I don't know what you're becoming, other than _not_ who you were. Everything happened fast, but I’m also part of normal, and you have me.”

Neferet gulped down whatever feeling was rising in her throat. Why dd Camille Elcott keep trying? She’d done nothing but push her away. She’d scared her a couple of times, threatened her at least thrice. A quick dip into her mind didn’t turn up words—Neferet was could hardly reach the words inside her own head, but it did draw a kind of warmth. Camille meant what she was saying. She wanted to be here. That struck Neferet. She _cared_. “Thanks, Camille,” she heard herself say.

Camille smiled, “and another thing. I know you’re nervous, but you need to remember, he fucked up worse than you did." She paused, searching for the description she wanted, "you were an 18 year old who made a decision to spend your life with someone. He’s a grown-ass man that was supposed to take care of you, and instead he decided it was fine to tell you you weren't his daughter, and hurt him. So don’t let him make you apologize a bunch if he isn’t gonna,” she folded her arms, resolute. Neferet didn’t register that she was haloed in green until the light turned yellow, and Camille shrugged, “I’ll go on the next one.”

It felt good. Camille had no idea what she was talking about, at all. It just felt good to hear her decide, even in the lies Neferet had told where her father wasn’t a monster, that this wasn’t her fault. He was in the wrong. She needed to be believed, that this was justice. Even if Camille didn't and couldn't know what she was talking about, this was enough. She just stared at Camille, not realizing until her face deformed that there were tears in her eyes again.

Camille kept talking. “I know I’m kind of not one to talk, because I was your best friend, and I was also supposed to support you, and I turned on you, but Neferet, please don't let him off just so things can be normal, which, you didn’t do with me, so I don't think you really need me to tell you what to do here. There's always another chance. You're not gone if this doesn't work out. You'll get some kind of normal back,” she assured her. Neferet stayed in Camille’s mind, feeding off the warmth. Trying to believe in the things she'd told her: that there were chances, that she wasn't dead if she failed, that she'd get her life back, It wasn't true, but it was comforting. It was what she wanted the truth to be. She wanted to believe in the world Camille was living in—believe in herself the way she did. She couldn’t lose her nerve. There was no choice here. Either she found him or he found her.

“I… thanks,” she said, finally finding her voice, and blotting out the tears with her sleeves. “Thank you, Camille. Goddess, I didn’t think I’d get this _emotional_.” And she didn’t want to be, but between fear, fury, and whatever catharsis and warmth she was getting, there was nowhere for all these feelings to go but out through her eyes. It was weird, and wrong to be crying in front of her. Better for her case, she knew, but it felt wrong. She wanted to hide her face. This was too much like who she was. Too vulnerable.

Camille shook her head, “hey. It’s okay. I get it.” And she really didn’t, but Neferet didn’t know how to tell her anything about all of this. It felt surreal, sitting in Camille Elcott’s passenger seat like she had so many times. “Do you want to talk about it?”

That desire, the forbidden one to be known, and understood, to have a friend resurged. Neferet wished she could spill it all out, get this out of her body, and have support. Camille would stop her, if she knew she was ready to kill her father. Camille would be horrified if she told her the truth about the night they left Chicago. She settled for something less, in the hopes that it would take the edge off. “It was just… It felt good hearing that it isn’t my fault, and that how I felt about it mattered,” she admitted, and it was too close to the truth for her to allow herself to say more.

The light turned yellow again without Camille’s knowledge, when she offered Neferet her hands, ignored that when she held Neferet's, it was shaking, “it isn’t your fault at all!” She insisted emphatically, “everyone in your life—me included, yikes—turned on you because you loved someone, and he loved you too. I’m 18, and your dad is like 60-something, and if I can figure out that it’s super shitty for me to turn on you because of who you love, then he should be able to figure it out.” Wording it that way made it sound like an intolerance—like he was a homophobe, and she was gay—and not like his sick desires to possess her.

She forced half a smile, but Camille wasn’t done. “And this hurt you. You changed your name, and left the city, and I saw how miserable you were at the start. You were barely there even when I could see you.” She paused, “What you felt—feel was real, and it doesn’t go away just because he sent some boxes. He doesn’t get a free pass to do that, even if he doesn’t mean it anymore,” she insisted.

The blast of a horn behind them alerted Camille to the fact that the light was once again green. She rolled her eyes, and then hit the gas, her car lurching out of the lane. An impatient driver in an SUV merged around them the instant he was through the intersection, brandishing his middle finger. Neferet watched the vehicle speed off, how he could exist parallel to them was baffling.

She laughed. The hysterical sound soon filled the car, as Camille joined in. Neferet could hardly make sense of where she was, and what she was doing.

The car rolled up to a hotel. Pillars framed a driveway, which was lit almost as though it was spotlit. The doors were closed, a pristinely uniformed Valet waiting at the front, leaned against the glass doors. Camille stopped, and looked to Neferet one last time. “Text me when you get home, okay? You aren’t doing this alone,” she promised her.

Neferet nodded, and then she was alone. Alone with the necklace she had to trust to save her. She stood beneath the roof, staring up at the moon. It was the faintest sliver of a crescent. Barely a moon to pray to. Her eyes were full of the silver moonlight that seemed to overtake her when she stepped out from under the roof.

_Nyx,_ she thought, _please protect me. I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t_ want _to ever see him again. I need you to protect me from him this time,_ that thought came out bitter, she tired again, _now that I’m one of your fledglings, I need your protection from the man who’s come across the country to hurt me. I need this to end—and I need to know that whether I die or he dies, it ends here tonight._ A cloud blew over the moon. Either the goddess had turned away, or she’d held the clouds until Neferet was done. With or without the goddess, Neferet didn’t have a choice.

Neferet transformed, as she breathed it, from a woman on death row to the estranged daughter of a rich banker—most likely here to get her allowance back. She’d lived months in Wheiler house, she’d learned to pretend while she was blocking the door every night and hosting parties by day. She pulled the pearls forward, unzipped the coat. One more breath until she became unrecognizable.

The valet was the only one who saw. When she passed him, his brow furrowed in concern, “you coming to see someone, miss?” He asked.

Neferet forced a slight laugh, “I haven’t seen my dad in _forever_ ,” she talked more slowly than she wanted to, drawing out the last word like a dramatic teenager, “I’m just not sure what to say. The whole,” she gestured to the crescent moon on her forehead, “is kind of a lot for him, and I just want to make sure he knows I’m still his daughter, you know?” She tried, letting a little of the fear show through. Anxious was what she was going for.

He smiled, “you look a lot like my daughter,” he assured her—Neferet doubted him on principle. “And I think the fact that you’re here trying to have a relationship with him after changing species is shows him that you’re still his daughter. He’s probably very proud of you,” the man assured her.

She rearranged her mask into relief, “thank you,” she breathed, “if you had a fight with your daughter, and then she became a fledgling, what would you want her to say?” She queried, wanting him to have a part of the story for when he was questioned. If he thought she was like his kid, he was unlikely to think she was capable of murder.

“I guess,” he paused, “I’d want her to tell me that our differences don’t matter, and our family does,” he stopped again, as though the words eluded him, “whatever species change, or argument, or differences, I’d want to know that none of that matters, because she’s still my little girl,” he stopped talking long enough Neferet thought she was able to leave. The minute she tried to, he added, “and I’d want her to know that I’m proud of her. It looks like you’ve had a really stressful time, and you thought of your family. I’d be proud of how I raised you, and of you.”

Her father had nothing to be proud of. He’d earned worse than she was capable of doing to him. She forced a smile, and looked down so he didn’t see the look she couldn’t hide, “thank you,” she whispered, “your little girl is very lucky.” The girl in that picture had nothing to run from. She wouldn’t grow up fearing her father.

“Your father is too,” he told her.

Tonight, that luck wore out.

Neferet walked into the hotel, mercifully, it was pretty empty. The leather couches that had been arrayed for guests to wait on were vacant, around tables with plates covered only in crumbs. There was one concierge at the desk, slumped onto one of her hands over a book. Neferet heard her own footsteps like a heartbeat on the silent room, until she was at the desk. “Hi,” she said, carefully pitching her voice to the silence of the room.

The woman’s head snapped up, and she filed her glasses, which had been rather askew, and blushed. “Hi there, checking in?” She asked.

Neferet shook her head, “as a fledgling, it would be a pretty short stay,” she forced a laugh, “I’m here to see my dad.”

The concierge blushed a little harder. “Oh! Yeah, I… whoops, I didn’t notice the-” she almost knocked a pile of papers that were under her elbow. Distracted enough that it didn’t matter how Neferet acted except for the security cameras. She just kept hiding her clenched fists in her pockets. “Who’s your dad, sweetheart?” She asked.

Something about the pet name caught her off guard. It felt wrong. It was just a southern thing, It didn’t mean anything. It just felt wrong. Too personal. “Barrett Wheiler. He should have arrived today,” she said, just a second later than she should have, to ensure she sounded right.

The woman didn’t notice the hesitation, already searching the registry. “Wheiler,” she muttered, “Yeah, Barrett, there he is. He booked the suite on floor 10. I think your sister, or something is supposed to be using the other one.”

There were cold needles in her skin, and for a split second her lungs felt as though they might collapse. “My sister?” She barely got the words out. Holding her breath meant she couldn’t scream. It gave her something to think about. The fullness in her lungs.

“Yes,” the concierge smiled, “he had a bunch of dresses cleaned and moved back up to his room by room service. I see that here.”

Neferet’s aching lungs released shaky bouts of air, as she tipped her head into her hands for a moment of release. She’d known he came to take her back, not to kill her. She was of no use to him dead. When she looked up, it was with a smile she couldn’t feel her cheeks contorted into, “I’m - I’m Emily!” She told the woman at the desk, “I’m his daughter. This means I can go home,” she sighed, if she was lucky, the tears in her eyes looked like joy. The waver in her voice felt sounded less hysterical.

The concierge smiled, “Emily is the other name on the registration. I’ll get you your card, Miss Wheiler. Anything else I can do for you?” She asked.

She needed time. “Actually, yes,” Neferet stalled. “Can you have someone bring up a bottle of brandy. The best you have, we don’t care about the money. I’d like to bring it up. And dinner for the pair of us, to be brought to the room when you can.” She heard herself talking, but didn’t feel anything around her. Selecting food was easy—the cost didn’t matter, he was paying, and it just meant, in case no one could hear down one floor, or up one floor, there would be room service coming up to hear her. The concierge completed all the ordering, and then told Neferet, “the bottle will be here in ten minutes, and the food should be ready in 25-30. Does that work for you?”

Neferet nodded, suddenly very aware of her dry mouth. “Is there a bathroom on this floor?” She asked, “I just want to touch up my makeup and everything before I see him, you know?” When the concierge pointed down a hall, chirped out a thanks, and walked to the door as slowly as she figured passed for normal.

Once she was in the bathroom—single stall, mercifully,—the facade slipped, and she put her head between her knees and sobbed. She hadn’t been counting on being the only room on the floor. Window open meant people on the street might hear, but there weren’t many people out at 1 am. Not helpful. Maybe floor 9 and floor 11 would hear, but she couldn’t count on it. Room service was going to be there pretty quickly. Her phone was with her in case he moved her to a different room, or offsite. It was the best she could do.

She checked it, hardly able to focus on the words. There were a bunch of messages from Arthur, “Not like this,” the first one read. “Neferet…is that your name now? He’s been flipping shit here. He isn’t there to apologize. You know him better than that. If you want our lives back, come back to Chicago, stay on campus. I can visit. This is insane.”

She took a deep breath, and started typing. “I don’t know if Camille told you, but I’m different. I’m different enough that he won’t look at me and see either Emily, or my mother. I’m Neferet now. Camille told me he wanted us to be a family again, he wanted to make it right. I need to believe he wouldn’t have done it if he wasn’t drunk. I need to believe he’s a man who made a fucked up mistake, and not a monster. Arthur, you can’t imagine what it’s like, thinking your family only exists to hurt you. If there’s a chance this can be over, I deserve it. I deserve not to have that night hanging over my head for the rest of my life. I deserve to have a family, and I think, maybe, if I finally get the apology he almost gave Camille’s dad, it can end. I know you don’t understand, and I know you can’t. We didn’t talk that night. You’ve never been through this.”

She sent that, and then added a second message, “I need you to call me in 20 minutes, exactly. If I don’t answer, call the hotel, and send security to the suite on floor 10. I know the risks, Arthur. I know I’m safe if you protect me. I need to do this. He can’t have spent 17 years taking care of me, and protecting me, and then wake up one day a monster.” And that was true as well. He was a monster longer than she’d known. Her mother had taken it before her. She’d learned to block her door.

Arthur responded almost instantly, “20 minutes. That’s it.”

She then texted Camille. “Hey. Thanks for the drive tonight. I really needed to hear that what I felt mattered, and that you were there. Whatever happens tonight, I just think I need to tell you how lucky I am that you didn’t give up on me this week.”

It didn’t serve any purpose for her alibi. It just felt like she should have some last words, if this didn’t work out. Something that wasn’t a lie, and Camille was the closest she had to a friend. She stood up, and splashed her face with some cold water, and looked into her own eyes in the mirror. “I have to kill him,” she murmured to herself.

There was a flicker behind her. Something dark, almost imperceptible. “Hello?” She called, and it flicked a little closer, somewhere between fog and a snake. “What are you?” She breathed.

It drifted toward her, _I am your answer. I am your protection._

Neferet squinted at it, and then took a breath. “What do you want?”

_To protect you, of course,_ it whispered, and she offered it a hand, watching something thin and serpentine slip up her arm, and coil around her forearm.

“Why?” She demanded, not cringing back from the unearthly chill.

_I need you. I need a home, you understand,_ it whispered, _you need my power. You need to kill him._

Hearing it say it aloud was different. If felt colder. It felt as though the serpent accused her. “I have to do this,” she accosted it, “I can’t live waking each time a door opens, looking for him in every shadow. He took that from me. I have to take that back. His life or mine.”

_And I will see this through beside you,_ it assured her, the shadow melting into her skin. She didn’t know if she’d finally lost it, and this was a comforting delusion. Maybe this was sent by Nyx, and she’d heard her. Whatever it was, it didn’t change what she was here to do.

Somehow, she was different when she opened the door. Leaving the bathroom felt surreal, she felt different. She was the angel of death, and she was Neferet. She was not the ghost of Emily hoping to haunt him anymore. She swept out, her heels echoing around her across the tile, until she reached the desk, and claimed the bottle with a soft thanks. She didn’t take the elevator. It was faster, but it was still. The echoes followed her up the stairs, like a constant, pulsing heartbeat, until she reached the tenth floor landing, which was just outside one door.

It seemed so normal. The bland hotel wallpaper, the paintings of fruit and pseudo-antique light fixtures, the light wooden door, with the key card slot. It wasn’t ready to bear witness. It felt like she was in the wrong place for this. She no longer felt human, nor vampyre, she’d become judge, jury and executioner.

_1:31 AM:_ she watched her own hand be the one to turn the doorknob this time. When the door swung open, silhouetted in the doorway, she spoke. “Awake, are you? Good. You need to be. We have things to settle between us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So for some fun things I hid in this chapter, Camille's roommate Liv, who has a huge crush on Neferet is based off the very embarrassing crush I had on her for a while, at a specific age. Olivia isn't my name, but it's an alias I use online, because of twelfth night, so that's a fun little thing I snuck in.
> 
> Now, about Darkness. She connects with it in the bathroom, late in this chapter. I talked it over with friends in my HoN discord, but I almost cut that out, because I hated the thought that I was treating her killing her dad as the start of any kind of villain arc. He deserved to die. The way I've framed the events in this fic, he has come to Tulsa explicitly to abduct her. He is a danger, both to her and to others while he is alive. He is rich, powerful and corrupt as they come. There is no other way to protect anyone from him, least of all her.
> 
> Darkness does not equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good, and that's the that on that for now. I have a plan for it, don't worry, but her use of darkness in this chapter is not any kind of symbolism intended to represent her as 'fallen' or 'evil' now. It's a force trying to prey on her situation, and trying to push her to become more paranoid, and to start that quest for power. 
> 
> So there's your daily dose of overshared authorial intent.


	7. Starting over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neferet is interrogated about the murder, and then has a surprisingly honest conversation with Camille

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! This fic has officially passed 20K, which is a huge milestone for me. I'm really pumped.
> 
> So, this chapter starts AFTER Neferet kills her dad, and when it's told in flashbacks, it's very much told by her on her terms. I wanted it that way, so he had absolutely no presence in the fic of his own--it's all filtered through her. this fic is about her. It does address the murder, and the night she left Chicago--though not in more detail than I did last chapter. 
> 
> Next chapter we meet Lynette, who, If you read Violent Love, Marble skin, or if you recall Forgotten, has a worse backstory than Neferet does. But again, this fic is about healing. So we aren't getting gratuitous flashbacks in her life. 
> 
> I've also written part of Camille's interrogation scene, which I might post as an optional 'extra'. 
> 
> one other thing. One of Neferet's lies to the cop is that she got so caught up in this euphoric fantasy that her life could be normal and didn't see reason. That sounds a little like my experience, as a bipolar person, of hypomania. My brain basically makes it's own cocaine, so sometimes when I get too high up, I have trouble being objective, get carried away, and my impulse control gets a lot harder. I didn't realize until I wrote it that I just used my own mental illness. Odds are she's bipolar II as well, because god knows I don't know how to write someone else's emotions without including the hyperdrive mine do. Her experience with panic attacks is also ripping off my own symptoms, so I'm not even surprised. 
> 
> This is the first chapter that doesn't start off with a song quote. We pick that back up in the next chapter, with the other song.

The linoleum chair was sticky, and the light harsh and insufferable. There was a small grey table before her, offensively nondescript. The detective entered, the door slamming behind her. She set the water down in front of Neferet. “I’m sorry about the light. I have maintenance figuring out if they can dim it.” Neferet saw a dimmer on the side of the lamp. Didn’t bode well for the cop’s honesty, which was good. She didn’t have the energy to go in her head.

Her ploy was good cop. Undoubtedly, her partner pacing outside the room, was going to be the bad cop. Boded well enough that they sent in the good cop first, but it didn’t surprise her. She didn’t want to know how she looked right now. They must have thought she was fragile, couldn’t take his strategies. Or else she was gullible.

“So why don’t you start by telling me why you were at that hotel, sweetie?” She asked. Neferet paused to choose her words, deciding to give her the story a little at a time.

“I wanted to make up with my father,” she croaked, voice hoarse. After a small sip of water, she amended, “I wanted him to apologize.” She wished she hadn’t had to scream so much. Her throat burned as the cold water went down, tasting like the waxy dixie cup it was in. It would do. It was water.

“What did he need to apologize for?” She leaned in like they were friends, and this was a secret.

Neferet resisted the urge to scream at her too. Not worth hurting her throat. “I-I’ve never talked about this before,” she stammered out. “May first, Arthur Simpton proposed to me at dinner, back in Chicago. My father was furious,” she trailed off. “I went home sick, because I was to be marked early the next morning. I don’t know when he got home, but I know he opened my door May 2nd at 1:31 AM. It was a habit of mine. I wrote down when he’d tried to open it.”

The officer nodded, writing something down. If she called Neferet obsessive-compulsive or anything like that, and got a psych panel, Neferet was going to be annoyed. “There were other times?”

Neferet nodded, “I blocked the door the other times. I wrote it out so I knew it was real. I—who would want to believe their father could do that?” She asked, and she meant that. She hadn’t wanted this to be her life, and she’d never asked to get backed into a corner where she had to kill him, or risk what he’d do to her. This _shouldn’t_ have been her world,. It wasn’t fair that now, that fell on her.

“So that was the first night you didn’t block the door?” The officer queried.

“Since February,” she confirmed. The thing about being the one in the corner was that she knew what it took to survive. He didn’t. He’d been drunk, and slow, and oblivious the night she came back. He’d closed the door, but not bolted it, hadn’t room service, or for the desk to give his name and room out. He didn’t know what it took to survive. He’d never had to protect himself. He’d always been the monster in the shadows.

Her fists clenched. The prick of her nails was almost as satisfying as the feeling of the wire necklace in her hands. He hadn’t seen her coming. By the time she’d spoken, his head had snapped to her, reflexes slowed. He wasn’t ready for her to own the night, the shadows. She was faster, stronger, sharper than he remembered, and she was prepared. 

She didn’t feel it—really feel it until her heartbeat was in her hands, and his throat was straining against the pearls and wire. Blood wept around it. He’d struggled. They hit the floor. She knew it was coming. It didn’t make it easy. He was heavy. He reeked of his brandy. There were hands in hair, teeth in skin. She drove her knee into him repeatedly. It was supposed to be an act that she was fighting for her life.

It felt real enough.

“What happened then?” The officer asked, putting her hand on Neferet’s arm as if in solidarity. She probably just wanted to know if Neferet’s heart sped up.

Neferet continued, “I was sick. I was weak. I could hardly stand, let alone get out…”

Tonight, she was stronger than he was, especially with the adrenaline. Especially with whatever strange burst of power the snakelike creature seemed to grant her, when it joined the necklace around his throat. She couldn’t hear her own screaming, but could feel it in her throat.

Her phone buzzed violently against her leg. It couldn’t be too long. She stared him in the eyes, his bulging, bloodshot, his arms ineffectively grasping for her throat. “You’re never going to touch me again,” and though her voice was hysterical, her eyes were cold. He knew why he had to die. There were slamming fists at the door, not enough to save him, she’d bolted it.

Her arms and neck had the bruises she needed. Her body had the scratches. He went out flailing on his back like a drying beetle, face purple, swollen fingers grappling for her throat. Only once he was gone, did she have the foresight to roll them over. It looked more accidental. He was a puppet, building eyes and purple skin, blue lips. She had him on her strings now. He moved when she let him. She screamed for help, over and over, but he was just another part of the show.

When the officers broke down the door, they saw a frightened child screaming for him to stop, still pulling on the necklace like she was using it to try to pull him off her body, his sick, heavy shell jerking ineffectively on her puppet strings.

As she’d hoped, the wire snapped, and he fell. The woman interrogating her pulled him off her, and while her partner attempted CPR, she wrapped Neferet in one of the blankets from the hotel bed, and asked her of she was okay.

When she wept, they were tears of relief. They shook her body all the same. The officer couldn’t tell ecstasy form hysteria. He was _gone._ She was _free_.

For the first time in both her lives, Neferet could breathe.

“Did he hurt you?” The officer asked, still not turning down her glaring interrogation light.

_Tonight, Neferet hurt him_. She got the final say in what happened to her body. She didn’t say that, “yeah,” she admitted, keeping her voice small, “It’s hard to talk about. Is it okay if I write it in my statement?”

The next mistake the ‘good cop’ made was telling her she understood. Her act bound her, let Neferet control what she asked, and how she told it. All she had to tell her was her victory. She’d be careful not to say too much, for risk of making it look less traumatic.

The story took shape: how Camille, who hadn’t known—Neferet ensured she exculpated her—had called for her things. How she’d panicked until she heard that he wanted to apologize. How she’d never wanted to believe that was who she was. How he was an alcoholic who didn’t admit he was wrong, but the gesture let her tell herself he’d stopped. When Camille said he was sorry, he wanted to be a family, she’d just been so desperate to believe her only living family member _wasn’t_ a monster. She got carried away, made herself believe it. Told herself a story about how she’d lived in her fantasy. She’d felt invincible. She felt like her life was coming back, and it was in her reach.

“I wasn’t in my right mind. The chance to be normal again seemed like it was right there, and I… it was like I couldn’t understand reason.” She said she was so excited she’d repaired the necklace, asked the high priestess if she could help her change part of her name back. The officer looked heartbroken. If it wasn’t an act, Neferet wasn’t sure how she stomached her job. If it _was_ she was nearly as good an actress as Neferet.

She said she’d come down a little in the car. Started to think this was dangerous. Camille had talked her through it. The valet came in, as a sign, she said, after her prayer. It felt like the goddess was trying to tell her that dads could do better. She was good enough at her own story that she shed a couple tears. This part had to be detailed, like she was trying to live in the part of it that was still okay. Like she didn’t want to get to the part that had set her free.

“The girl at the desk said he had a place I could go. I… it was either going to be good or bad. I had to take the chance,” she plead, “I just needed it all to be over, officer, I couldn’t sleep through the night. If I knew it would never happen again, I didn’t have to be someone completely new. I could have my friends, and my fiancé, and my family,” she said the last word particularly emphatically, forcing a couple more tears by looking into the light. “I texted Arthur, because he was real. He was from my world, and I needed him to believe in me, or I needed him to protect me.”

It was particularly laughable, Arthur protecting her when she’d killed a man with a necklace, and he hadn’t even offered her his jacket. She would leave that out—if she was out of touch enough with reality to believe her father could feel remorse, she could have plausibly have believed Arthur would save her, and she knew he’d try to look better when they asked him questions. That would check out. She told them she wanted room service so someone knew where she was. If it was good, they deserved a nice meal. If it wasn’t, someone would hear her.

She just _really, really wanted it to be real_ , and him to be sorry, but she wasn’t stupid, she insisted. She wasn’t going to lock the door. He’d done that. He’d bolted it. She tipped her head into her hands, and, to hide the smile she could hardly fight back, she asked, voice small and timid, “do I have to say this part?”

The officer nodded sadly, “this part I need in a verbal statement.”

The empathy was feigned then, _bravo, officer_. “He let me in. He even took the necklace. I thought I’d done it, till the door was bolted. It was like it was the night of the world fair all over again. His hands were on my throat, and he was calling me names, and I was sure I was going to die. I- Officer, there was this _hatred_ in his eyes. He was furious that I’d gotten away. I- that wasn’t a man who needed to be drunk, or a man who regretted it. I… fuck, I was so _stupid,_ ” she drew the word out, head in her hands while she rubbed under her eyes to better smear the makeup, and make the skin red like she was crying.

The officer’s hand squeezed hers, and she reassured her that this happened, and that she wasn’t judging her. _Just keep going, sweetie._

And she did. Him pulling the necklace, her calling for help, them struggling on the floor, when he dragged her down. Pulling on the necklace to get him off of her. Eyes closed because she couldn’t bear to see it. Screaming and pulling it till he stopped touching her, then trying to get it off her. The necklace breaking, and her being terrified that now she couldn’t protect herself.

She was convincing. There was a quaver to her words, a particular abruptness, stopping and starting, talking in fast jags like hyperventilation. Breath catching, and repetition. The eyes, the eyes, his hands, her neck. She was careful to repeat things. It made her sound as though it was all she’d been able to think about. She at no point mentioned when he died.

“When did you realize he was dead?” The cop asked.

She slumped in the chain, breath hissing through her lips. When she sat up and looked at the officer, she looked into the lamp, and her stinging eyes complied, worked up a tear for her. Between that and the relief, it streamed down her face when she hissed out another rough sigh. “I…I thought it, the first time when you pulled him off me. I… I thought he was unconscious or something. I… I didn’t feel like he could die. I felt like he was inevitable,” she took a pause, as though she was out of air in her lungs, “I… I thought that he might be, but it isn’t…” she trailed off, making her breath catch, and then apologizing again, “I… he’s gone. I just- I still feel like he’s on my lungs…” She gestured to her chest, “and he’s never going to be my father again,” she sobbed.

Relief and hysteria aired the same when she spoke right.

The officer confirmed more details. Got her to retell things enough she knew the sequence of events—more importantly, she knew Neferet knew it. Mixing up events would be sloppy. She asked why Neferet hadn’t reported him a week ago, which Neferet could be honest about: it was futile at best. He was rich, powerful, and she had no witnesses, She didn’t want people touching her, seeing her after. She just wanted to start over—be someone who didn’t hurt.

The honest parts were harder. The officer made her write her statement, then got a nurse to photograph her injuries. She downloaded the content of Neferet’s phone (voluntarily, her diary was not on it, though a short log of times the doors opened was in the notes). Once Neferet had cooperated as much as she could, she drove her back to the House of Night, and came in, to get her dress, and the tracker’s jacket for evidence, and then to ask the High Priestess and art teacher questions. Through the whole thing, Neferet was silent, sipped delicately at her water.

The High Priestess panicked when she came in, seeing the officer, the bruises on her throat. She asked over and over if Neferet was okay, and Neferet had kept her voice small, like she hardly had one, and asked her if she could just go lie down. She had the cop with her fooled—though not yet her partner. The high Priestess blamed herself, as though she could have stopped all this from happening.

She couldn’t have, if that was any consolation. Neferet was the only one who’d ever do what it took.

When she reached her room, she discarded her clothes hurriedly, and got into the shower, soap and water streaming off her body. No trace of him remained. Once the bruises faded, there would be no proof he’d existed. She finally let the tears fall, laughing into the stream of water, head tilted up into it, so it streamed over her. She was, for a moment, indestructible. She felt as though what she’d become, the Goddess Neferet, and presided over life and death.

It was the moment of her creation—her emancipation from her old life.

She left her shower, throwing a robe around her body, and then walking to the bed, casting a glance at the door. She lay down, and tried not to look at it. It was still wrong, leaving it bolted and locked. It felt like she was leaving it wide open. The longer she looked at it, the more the bruises tingled. It felt inevitable.

She got up, frowning at herself as she dragged the chest in front of it. She was going to forget him. Until she did, no one was getting hurt but the floor. The furrows deepened. If he was in his grave, why was she still digging?

***

Neferet slept as though she was dead. She didn’t awaken until nearly 4PM, when she heard a door down the hall slam, and though her eyes darted to the door, she didn’t sit up, but she reached for her necklace. It was gone. Broken. Instead she touched the thin, bruised line she’d given herself.

He was dead. She’d killed him.

She let out the breath that had caught in her throat. There was nothing that could be in that doorway that could take her. It was easier now, to rest. The one good thing he’d ever given her was the peace of mind that he was on an autopsy table, and she was lying in bed, with hundreds of years ahead of her, and the ability to hear men like him—no, people like him, anyone was capable of it—coming. She took a breath and reached through the door, into the hall, hearing the “voice” of someone silent.

“I wish I could spend the rest of the day. Selene would actually shit a brick if she caught me in here. Ashe is just so soft. Thank the goddess no one’s caught us so we can have this.” It restored her faith in humanity, just a little, hearing the man’s love struck soliloquy about one of the girls on the floor. She’d forgotten people could love.

She didn’t want to sleep yet, so she checked her messages. From Arthur “okay I’m calling,” then, “I called 911. Hotel security can’t deal with him.” Then finally, “Em, it’s been an hour. Can you just send me a sign you’re alive.”

Her old name. She wrinkled her nose. Still, she needed him to feel like the hero, so he’d talk up what he’d done to the cops. “You saved my life,” she sent back, “he was as bad as he was that night. I’m so glad you were there. I wasn’t alone.” He wasn’t going to be prepared for her to ghost him once the investigation was over. She didn’t much care. She wasn’t ready for him to discard her when she came to him that night.

Camille was next. “Awww! Thanks! I’m glad I didn’t give up on you too, and I’m glad we’re friends again. Good luck with your dad. Remember he’s the one that owes you an apology, and it isn’t over if it goes bad tonight! Text me when you’re home!” And a little heart emoji. Then “I’m guessing you needed some time! I’m headed to bed, but if you need me you can call, I don’t mind. I’ll see you tomorrow either way. Goodnight (or, good day, but that sounds super weird…)”

She didn’t know how to talk to Camille. It was so easy to lie to her when she’d gone to her room. Before Camille had tired to be a friend, and accidentally given her the reassurance she needed. She was the first person to act like what Neferet had felt that night was important. The first to try to support who she’d become. She was torn—she knew how dangerous it was to let anyone in, and if Camille ever learned what she’d done, she’d be talking to the cops in seconds. Neferet couldn’t act like the car trip meant she understood.

It just hurt pretending to have a friend when she _wanted_ one, wanted anyone she didn’t have to guard herself around.

She didn’t respond. She’d wait until she knew what to say to her. Down the hall there were footsteps and the click of a door close to 5pm, but she thought nothing of it. She spent the rest of the early evening reading, until the door clicked again at 7. She assumed someone liked early runs, or something similar. She was usually up early, so it didn’t seem unusual. Not until she looked at her phone, and saw Camille’s name on her screen.

Before she had time to open the message, she heard a knock at her door. “Who’s there?” She called.

“It’s just me,” Camille responded, her voice muted, and almost a little distorted. Neferet tried to probe through the door to see what she was feeling, but could barely touch before getting flooded with enough emotion that she stopped. Something was _wrong_. She hauled the chest out of the way fast—somehow, she felt strong enough that it just moved with her will. When the door opened, Camille’s face was red, and blotchy, as though she’d been crying. She sniffled for a moment, before throwing her arms around Neferet’s waist, and pressing her head against her chest.

“Camille?” Neferet asked, her silence unnerving her. It wasn’t like Camille not to talk. Something was overwhelming her. It seemed wrong. It was supposed to all be over now. Things were supposed to go back to normal, in her new life.

She feared that she knew why Camille was reacting like this.

“I’m sorry,” Camille breathed into her shirt. “I…I should have listened when you said there was something wrong. I got all hung up on Arthur, and I… I didn’t see because I didn’t want to, and that’s no excuse. And when I wanted to be an actual friend, I just kept not seeing. I didn’t try to know what would have made you change your name, and leave your fiancé and _fuck_ , I didn’t try to think that anything could’ve been different. You practically announced in a neon sign that you’d run away…”

Neferet let her talk, after kicking the door shut. She’d known this was going to come. Camille had brought them both to that point—him by accident, but her with some extent of intentionality. She’d known what Neferet felt deserved reparation. It wasn’t a wonder the cops insisted on questioning her this quickly.

She wasn’t done, “And I… I _knew_ …” Her voice fizzled out as her back heaved with a quiet sob. Neferet put her arms around Camille, wishing it hadn’t come to this. She was an important witness, but this wasn’t fair. Neferet hadn’t wanted her to get hurt.

“Camille,” she started, “it’s-”

Camille shook her head, “Neferet, please,” she mumbled, letting go of her and stepping back. When Neferet let go of her, she lead her back to the bed, where Camille sat down beside her, just as they had the night before. The silence was just as loaded. “I put you in danger,” she admitted.

Though it was in vain, Neferet tried, “I never mentioned danger.” In the vain hopes that the officer hadn’t told her too much. When the doors opened and shut it was one of the cops coming and going. When that didn’t get her an answer, she softened her voice, and took one of Camille’s hands, as Camille had in the glow of the traffic lights. “What did the officer tell you?” She asked.

“He didn’t _tell_ me,” Camille shook her head. “He kept asking me questions about before, about what things were like. About what I thought he was capable of. He kept asking the same question so many ways, so many times.” Her blue eyes were huge when they found Neferet’s, holding the ghosts of everything the man—the bad cop, Neferet realized—had asked. “He kept asking things I should have thought of before he was asking them. I—I thought you were dead.”

“He is,” Neferet confirmed softly, but didn’t tell her anything else. She could feel the black serpent, around the arm that wasn’t holding Camille’s hand, and it calmed her the strangest bit. It had a chill to it, grounded her.

Camille seemed to pause, as though this had been so unexpected she’d shut down to understand it. Neferet squeezed her hand as her eyes looked at nothing, and she tried to make words, the motion of a fish on the surface of polluted water, gasping at air that would not help, nor bring relief. “The cop—for all I know, he was making stuff up. I—you’re not violent, I told him. You don’t—and I believe that too. Then he asked about _him.”_

Neferet bit her lip, and envisioned the strand of wire and pearls and the way it cut into his reddened, bulging throat. The droplets of blood that wept around the wire where it sliced. It helped knowing she’d been his end. Knowing everything that had happened was over now. It made it just a little easier. She still didn’t want to say it.

“And that… wasn’t stairs,” Camille admitted. “I can see the bruises. I- there are bruises on your throat, Neferet. And there are shoes by your door.”

Neferet closed her eyes, before admitting, “no. What you saw wasn’t stairs, and a couple of thrown items. He didn’t tell me I wasn’t his daughter. I didn’t leave through the front door.” Her voice was strained, and she just wanted this part over with. “How much did he ask about that night?” She asked, not willing to go in and find out. Camille’s mind was a vortex, and she couldn’t get sucked into it. She wouldn’t find herself again if she did.

“He asked if he was violent…if I thought he hurt you,” Camille hesitated enough Neferet knew all she had to. It was merciful of her, not to list the questions he probably asked.

“He did,” Neferet barely heard herself say, “I can’t think of anything the officer could have invented to see if you’d just agree.” She didn’t look at Camille, staring straight ahead of herself at the door. It was disconcerting that her door wasn’t blocked, but she owned the night now. HE died learning that.

Camille covered her mouth, the corners of her eyes scrunching to try to hold the tears in. “Oh, goddess.” Neferet knew what she was thinking—that she’d left her alone in her house with that monster all those times before the last when she invited him to Tulsa. _She had_. Neferet had been alone.

Somehow, leaving her like this felt markedly different from ghosting Arthur after she was done using him in the interrogation. It felt wrong. “That was the only time. There were other nights in Chicago, if the cop asks, and he will. I blocked my door.” When Camille gasped, she kept talking. The faster this was out, the faster this conversation could be over, “Going yesterday was stupid. I knew I had to lie to you to make you think it was a good idea, or an idea of any kind. I just wanted an apology. I deserved one. If he just admitted it…” she let herself trail off, and when Camille squeezed her hand, Neferet added, “I should have known that people like him aren’t sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Camille said, voice muted. The room was silent, but for her sniffling the occasional time, and Neferet thinking as loudly as she could to avoid being left with her thoughts. Trying to go through song lyrics, trying to feel the little shadow serpent. Counting things.

“And he’s dead,” Camille said slowly, breaking through the silence, “you had to, or he’d have…or you’d be dead.” Before Neferet could get in her self-defence story, Camille said something she’d never have expected, “well, good-fucking-riddance!” Even she seemed shocked by her own outburst. “Its just… He deserves to be dead, and you didn’t deserve to get hurt. And if the option is between the two, then I’m glad he’s gone.”

Neferet couldn’t be completely truthful with her, but it felt somehow validating that even Camille wanted him dead. It felt like this was real, like what she’d seen and felt and done were both real and finished. It felt like somehow her life wasn’t so alien that others couldn’t speak the language that told her story. “I’d never tell the officer,” she started, emphasizing that to Camille, “but Camille, it’s such a fucking relief, not living in a world where if I become visible, he might see me,” she sighed, tipping back onto the bed. It was the most honest she could be.

Camille leaned over her enough to look at her face “I won’t tell him ever,” she swore, “I get that he’s gonna misunderstand that, it’s just like, of _course_ you’re relieved. I’m relieved because I don’t have to worry for my friend anymore. Neferet, hearing what he did, I…this sounds awful, I wouldn’t care if you’d gone in there to kill him, after what he did. Especially if it was you or him. And I’m never gonna tell that cop that, but I just thought that if I said it, you wouldn’t have to feel guilty, you know, if that’s possible?”

Neferet would never tell her, but it helped all the same. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, trying to have a friend.


	8. See the Way You Hold Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neferet is interrogated a second time, and has to bite back the urge to fight the officer doing it. As a plus, she meets her new roommate, Lynette.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been awhile, and for that, I'm sorry! Got sucked into my other fandom (sidebar: if anyone is into buffy, Check My Profile)
> 
> So this chapter is FINALLY the chapter Lynette appears in. And I had to make it harder than it had to be. The cop was originally going to be an asshole, based off a friend's experience getting a background check, and dealing with a name change, and some things I read in a sociology of criminal justice class about interrogation ethics. 
> 
> Then it occurred to me--Lynette's mom's shitty boyfriends could pop up anywhere. Including somewhere else that would let them abuse power. So I made it worse. But I like to think this chapter was less stressful to read than the last... few.

The next time was harder. A man—the same officer who’d questioned Camille showed up at her door around 8pm. His manner was abrupt, as though he thought he was the protagonist in a cop drama, and he was seconds away from convicting her. She let him in—what choice did she have—and he started with the necklace. She didn’t know how many times she repeated “I wanted it to be stronger.” Before she snapped and told him that she had a pretty clear reason to want a piece of jewelry that was broken when he hurt her not to break again. Maybe she was the necklace, was the implication.

He looked almost smug—getting her angry was the point of the exchange. The pace was painstaking, through every detail of the night she became a fledgling, two and three times over, then through last night. Grilled her on the fact that she yelled at Camille, before she decided she wanted to make amends. She explained it away that if he’d wanted to hurt her, she’d thought, he’d have delayed the boxes so she didn’t see him coming. _She believed what was easiest._ Confirmed more about what she told who, what they said. All on security cameras. He wanted to see if she’d lie, or if her stories would change or grow embellished with the retelling. The black serpent coiled around her wrist twitched, disquiet. It didn’t like him. Over and over, every detail, it twisted and wound around her hand, looping through her fingers.

Over and over, explaining every bruise.

He watched her begin to freeze, watched the air get lost in her throat and impossibly trapped, bent around itself. He watched her gasp, and dislocate from her own faulty body explaining how she’d sustained injuries he had on file, already explained in the testimony she’d written up. He wanted to see what she did. This wasn’t about the story, this was some obscene gesture of his power—he wanted to see her fear. To destabilize her.

He insistently used the wrong name. _“Ms Wheiler,”_ over and over, no matter how many times she forced her voice level and said, “my legal name is Neferet.”

He was testing her, seeing if she was violent, if she’d explode at him the next time he prodded at something she didn’t talk about, and then called her by that name.

She wanted to. She wanted to shove him into the floor and scream at him for thinking he could throw it in her face for shock tactics. For telling Camille what her father had done but not that she was alive. Camille would cooperate more of Neferet was in danger. The serpent tightened, looping up her wrist, then her arm. It steadied her. She could focus on the chill of its body, the pressure of it’s body wrapping her arm. It gave her something to think about that wasn’t where the scratches on her thighs were from.

She took a second to drink a sip of water and dip into his thoughts, “It just doesn’t seem right that she’d go back…could just be one of those stupid girls you see with no self-preservation instinct, but then why the safety net…”

She could have killed him. He didn’t know what her world was, what the choices were. He didn’t understand a single one of the people he terrorized for information. He didn’t understand the things a person’s mind had to do when someone who was supposed to love them hurt them. She’d spent the first months trying to understand if she was sane or if this was an increasingly detailed delusion. She’d spent longer trying to understand why her father could do it, when the answer was simple: he didn’t see her as a person. She wished that at some point this man would know the kind of suffering he trivialized.

The serpent was moving faster, shivering and climbing up higher and higher until it wrapped her neck, the weight of it like her pearl necklace. Deadly. Comforting. She didn’t make eye contact. He’d see her behind her eyes. She couldn’t hide what she felt.

“Ms Wheiler,” he began, “can you tell me again why you messaged Arthur at 1:23 AM,”

“It’s Neferet, officer. I understand your insistence on legal names as an enforcer of law. That is mine. Why are you calling me by a former name?” She asked, before carrying on, repeating that she was afraid, but she had just _really wanted_ her father to not be a monster, and she’d thought that if her fiancé protected her, she could be okay. She made herself sound small, as though shunted between the two forces of her life—neither of whom she would allow any access to her life anymore. He didn’t have to know that she didn’t depend on Arthur as anything but a witness.

He refused to call her by her name. Every fucking time he addressed her, it was like he was toying with her, like the death of 1000 cuts, where each on its own looks innocuous enough. This was a game for him, and it was about seeing what came out when she broke down—was she vicious or broken?

He was vile.

The serpent curled tighter, pressing against—though not obstructing— her throat, moving with her when she spoke and breathed. What it succeeded at was making her constantly aware of it. After half a retelling of the night before—the second he’d requested in this interview alone—they arrived at the same question both had insistently returned to, “Ms Wheiler, at what point did you realize you’d killed your father?”

“When I saw them stop CPR. I wasn’t thinking about him, I was fighting for my life, and trying to get him off of me. I honestly thought he was going to get up and go for my throat until I saw them stop CPR and zip him into a body bag,” she kept her voice quiet, as though it was hard to talk about. This was the one thing she didn’t mind retelling.

He frowned, and his forehead creased, “that was a strong necklace, Ms Wheiler. What would you have done if it had broken any sooner?” He asked.

Neferet heard a threat. The serpent about her neck pointed toward him, seeming to thicken from pencil thin to the thickness of two fingers. It’s unseeing, eyeless head aimed for him, jutting forward from her, opening a mouth of needle-teeth. It didn’t bite, but poised itself to. “I’d have tried to survive. I don’t know what that would have meant,” she was honest. The serpent could have helped. She’d have bitten, and kicked and screamed. Have gone for the eyes and the nose and every other weakness she could think of. Whatever happened, one of them was going to be leaving in a body bag.

“Did you intend to kill him?” He asked, leaning forward on his hands. It was always that question. And if she said No, he’d ask her again what she’d have done if he kept trying to kill her. If she said yes, well, that was a manslaughter charge.

“I intended to survive,” she insisted, “I just wanted to get away from him. If I’d had a way to get away from him, I’d have done that.” She meant that—just broader. She had no means to escape him now that he’d found her, and she’d taken the only way she could to get away from him. 

Then she heard it. A subtle click of the handle of the door. Her eyes were on it—Camille was early, if it was her coming up for dinner. Four hours early. That wasn’t normal for her. And Camille wouldn’t hesitate at the door. This was the click of someone who let go of the handle, someone hesitating. She wanted to know who tried to come in. It was too risky to be unfocused enough to try to hear whoever was there her way, which left only the less-subtle option. “Come in!” She called.

When the officer looked at her in confusion, she explained, “someone’s at the door. Heightened senses.” It wasn’t untrue. Her senses were not heightened by the species change. It was another way to survive. She didn’t tell him why, and he didn’t ask.

The door slowly swung open as the officer shook his head. “Okay, Ms Wheiler, if you remember anything else, I’ve given you my card.” Neferet fully intended to sate the razor teeth of the serpent with it once he was gone, but nodded.

The girl in the door was pale. So pale the crescent moon glowed against her skin. Her blue eyes were on the officer, and hadn’t moved from him. Her shoulders were curled in, arms tucked to her sides. The tank top she was wearing was tight enough Neferet could tell her chest wasn’t moving, her legs pressed tight together in cut off shorts, feet together in mid matched flip-flops. She looked like she was backed into a corner. There was a bruise, neferet noticed. Her eyelid was puffy, and the purple was starting to show around the creases, where the concealer had worn away, and below her eye. Her still damp blonde hair took bits of it with it when it touched it. She was another girl in disguise. She backed into the hall when she saw him, walking down, Neferet heard, to another doorway.

“My legal name is still Neferet, and I’ve told you everything I remember, officer. The walls were beige, the sheets were white, as hotel sheets are,” she quipped. Ushering him out, and then leaning her head into the hallway. “He’s gone.”

The girl appeared from the doorway, face flushed, walking slowly, hesitantly as though she didn’t know what she was getting into, and wanted to prolong it. Neferet reached, carefully into her head. She saw the man’s face, contorted, heard something loud, and then recoiled, actually pressing herself against the wall to get away from whatever she’d heard. The fear wasn’t hers, but it felt the same, until she’d disengaged.

The other girl stared at her, and she explained, “I swear, something just flew by me,” and when that sounded hollow, she held the door open to her, and added, “I’m just on edge—fucking cops. Some of the things they do should be illegal.” She muttered the last bit, but the other girl’s shoulders seemed to relax a touch at it. She was speaking her language.

She turned off her phone—thankfully it was a one-party consent state, and she didn’t have to tell him he was being recorded for her lawyer, and then watched her roommate—or she presumed that was why the girl was here—shut the door, then lock it and bolt it. 

The blonde sat wordlessly on the other bed, noticing how many of Neferet’s boxes were obstructing her side of the room when she looked to the other side. “Sorry,” she shuddered, “I’m just really not a fan of police.” Slowly she started to seem less restricted, less as though trying to move would provoke someone. Neferet knew that look. She knew that stillness.

She wasn’t a fan of that particular officer, Neferet knew. Davis. She’d see what she could find on him. “That one in particular is a bastard. Hope he likes lawyers,” she offered her a half-smile, “Goddess, could I have had a worse introduction?” She asked, with a bit of a laugh. Now would have been a good time to probe into the other girl’s mind—see whether or not she thought Neferet was a murderer. She didn’t want to see any more of the officer, and there was no way he was out of her head.

Her roommate shook her head, “I only heard a little. And I don’t trust anything he says,” she reassured her. “I’m also trying to get a transfer out—not because of you, or anything, but I hate the area. The tracker was going to see if Chicago was willing to take me—they’re fairly new, so they might have more room.”

Neferet’s reaction was irrational, but the words came out before she could speak, “Not Chicago,” she blurted, “trust me, I lived there when I was human, and you don’t want to be there,” she explained, trying to make herself sound a little more rational. “Tensions are at a high between rich people who don’t like having competition—particularly one bank—and the House of Night. I expect riots, and, knowing the other side of the equation, they won’t fight fair when the cops are on their side.” It made her sound sane, explaining it that way, rather than with her immediate disgust. And she was protecting her from more cops. Her roommate had been through enough without adding more altercations with the cops.

The serpent twitched. She wished the city would burn to the ground.

Her roommate cringed. “Alright, not Chicago. But worst case, I could get there, and transfer again.” Neferet noted that it didn’t stop her. Whatever she was facing here was worse. She was running. Probably from Davis, if he was in her memory. Her hands curled to fists, then she stretched her fingers out a couple times, trying to keep her body from being visibly tense.

She wished she’d stay. It was strangely comforting, knowing there was someone else like her. It wasn’t safe for her here, and Neferet knew it.

Neferet nodded, “hopefully it doesn’t come to that. I’m Neferet, by the way. No last name, no matter how insistent the officer is,” she made that part clear. She couldn’t stand the idea that anyone would think that was her name. Anyone would conglomerate the two names such that his was still strapped to hers. She’d put him in the ground. His name had no right to touch hers again.

Her roommate hesitated, “Lynette is my name. Lynette Witherspoon,” she introduced herself, “that pause definitely seemed a little suspicious, I swear, I’m not lying, I’m just getting used to it.” Like her, the name was different. Unlike her, she was still afraid. Neferet had threatened to gut Camille for using the wrong one. It didn’t seem like. Lynette had her fight yet. She wanted to protect her, at least, until she left.

Neferet offered her a smile, “you can tell I’ve changed my name. I know even when you didn’t want the last one, it takes some getting used to not using it.” She wanted her to be comfortable. It should have disconcerted her, or at least given her pause that she cared at all. She didn’t really think about it. She did her best not to point out, or look at the eye, or her lack of boxes. It was familiar. She’d talk about it when she was ready.

“I can also get my things off your side of the room. I had a lot of unexpected boxes turn up, and I honestly think I’m going to donate most of it. Belonged to my last life. If you want any of it, it’s all yours once I pick out the few things I actually want,” she offered.

Lynette looked at the assortment of boxes down there, and Neferet added, “I’m making assumptions, of course. I don’t know if you’re having things brought up. I got here in a dress I wanted to burn and a stolen jacket with no shoes,” she admitted. She wanted to try to tell Lynette that they were similar, even if it probably didn’t look all the most likely, given the clothes she was able to afford in her last life, and the things she’d bought with her little bit of stashed money. She was just good at hiding it—even though, if Lynette looked closely, she’d notice the bruises on her throat that she’d wanted the officer to see.

Lynette shook her head, “I’m pretty much hoping they think I’m a runaway and don’t bother with a police report. Is it was normal for fledges to get a part-time, or something like that?” She asked, as Neferet walked to the other end of the room, and dumped a box on the bed. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to look through,” she suggested.

“I don’t know what’s going to fit, or whether or not he sent specific things, but I don’t want the memories attached to most of this.” She was blunt enough about it, selecting two or three tops and a skirt to hang in her wardrobe, an imperceptible number of things compared to what was on her bed. There were only a few things that weren’t tainted now.

Neferet stood back and watched Lynette sort through, picking out some of the jeans, some of he shirts, even a dress. She had an eye for the nicer things in the box—some of which Neferet wished didn’t remind her of funerals, and dinners with her father.—one occasion distinctly more traumatic than the other “Is it going to be hard for you to see someone wearing any of this?” Lynette asked, halfway through the pile.

Neferet didn’t have an answer, “try something on, and I’ll find out. Even if it is, you’re planning to move.”

Lynette, with an almost uncanny eye for what would be the most loaded memory, selected a blue dress Neferet had chosen when she’d hosted dinner for the families. The one she’d met Arthur in. She slipped it over her head, and pulled her head through. Where it had been tight on Neferet, it seemed to fit her quite well. It didn’t look the same. She didn’t look like the same naive girl—if anything, she looked a little bit like Camille. “That was one of the more emotionally charged ones. Any of it should be fine if that one doesn’t do anything,” she replied, “I have to say, you wear it well. It looks good.”

Lynette gave a twirl, letting the bottom of the dress flare out. “I’ll keep this one.” By the bottom of that box, she’d taken most of it, and Neferet had started hanging it for her. She’d even cracked a smile, distracted enough from her current situation to enjoy it. That was what Neferet had wanted. That stillness, that silence was too familiar. Maybe it was new for her, shopping for clothing in Neferet’s boxes, getting to take whatever she wanted. Having someone act like a friend. Neferet hoped it was enough to get her out of her head. 

Either way, she was enjoying it. Neferet poured out another box, this one mainly dresses, and took about a quarter of them—she hadn’t worn most of them in longer than she was trying to distance herself from. “What did you wear this many dresses to?” Lynette asked, almost impressed.

Neferet shrugged, “my father was always going to formal stuff, and I needed to go with him a lot of the time. And my friend Camille, who you’ll probably meet in a few hours, liked to go clubbing, hence the-” she held up another one that she was keeping, this one with a plunging mesh neckline.

Lynette took less of them, but a few of them Neferet wished she’d be able to see her in. She would be beautiful. Neferet kept a few others, tossing them into her own closet. One day, she’d feel normal in them again. She wanted to.

Once they’d finished the boxes of clothing, Lynette’s closet was full, and Neferet knew what she wanted to keep. Most of what she’d worn on the memorable days had found its way back into the donation boxes. She put away the makeup and things like that, leaving her second hairbrush out so that Lynette could use it as well. Shoes went similarly. A lot of the rest was cast out of her room without a second thought. She knew how much she could tolerate from Before. At least it had helped someone.

Lynette shut the wardrobe doors and returned to her bed, “thanks,” she said, “it’s really nice not having to just rely on the uniforms.”

Neferet nodded, “I like you. I didn’t want most of what was in those boxes, if anything you spared whoever deals with the donations a lot of lifting. Not to mention, that blue dress was beautiful on you.” She paused, “if you’re still in town when they unfreeze my accounts, it would be nice to go out, get you some things of your own as well. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten to go out somewhere with a friend, so you’d be doing me a favour.”

Lynette hesitated, before seeming to come to a decision, “I’m guessing money isn’t something you really have to think about,” she replied, “otherwise, I’d feel a little bad.” She seemed to have noticed the amount, or the quality of the clothing. Maybe Neferet’s disregard for her things seemed strange to her. She wasn’t sure what tipped her off. It was true.

Neferet shook her head, “inheritance,” she said simply.

Lynette’s face was unreadable, “It’s always family,” she said, more to herself than to Neferet. Neferet understood it all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Hopefully I'll have the next one done soon!


	9. The Stories We Tell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lynette and Neferet get to know each other a little better

They were quiet until an hour before Camille was supposed to get there, when Neferet put her book away, and moved the boxes of what clothing Lynette hadn’t wanted to the side of the room, out of the way. “Just as a warning, a friend of mine is coming by soon. She’s bringing me dinner.” She didn’t mention that it was predominantly because she didn’t want to be in the public eye yet. Everyone down there knew she’d killed her father by now, and the scrutiny… she had to figure out how to be seen, what to do.

It was best for now to stay up here.

Lynette hesitated, and Neferet added, “I’ll warn you, she may not look like much, but she _will_ talk you to death.” Though her tone was light, she knew well enough what part of that Lynette actually needed to know—Camille was safe. If she played it off like she was joking, neither of them had to address why it was important that she tell her she was safe. “If you need some time, I’ll go to her room,” she offered.

She watched Lynette’s hand fly to her eye, touching the skin where the concealer was rubbed off—mores under her eye, like she’d cried a little. Neferet didn’t point it out. When Camille had pointed out the state she was in on her first day, it had made everything harder. She didn’t need to feel like it was all people saw when they looked at her. Rather than point it out, she took a risk, heading toward the bathroom. “When you meet people here, can you not mention these?” she motioned to her neck, “I’m going to go cover them, but I just don’t want them talking.” She headed to the bathroom, and began to expertly blur them out with a brush and some of the concealer the vampyres left for going off campus.

“Yeah,” Lynette said absently, walking into the bathroom, and helping herself to some. She eyed it on her fingers, rubbing it between them to see how opaque it was, “this stuff any good?” She asked.

Neferet had enough practice that she expertly erased him from her skin, hardly seeming to think about it. “It’s the only stuff I trust to stay on,” she explained, setting it with some powder, then spritzing all of it with a sealing spray to keep it on properly. “I just can’t wear it when the detective comes, or-”

“Or he’ll think you painted them on,” Lynette observed, “I won’t tell anyone what I saw.” She assured her. “Could you help me out a bit here? I tripped and hit my eye…” The excuse was a formality. She wasn’t trying to convince her, but Neferet leaned in, first wetting a cotton pad with makeup remover. She wouldn’t ask, and for once didn’t dare go into Lynette’s head. She’d check if she was safe when she had time to recover from what she expected to find. All she could do for now was be gentle with her.

Her breath caught when she wiped away Lynette’s makeup. It was worse than it looked under the concealer. It spilled down her cheekbone a little, went up almost all the way to her eyebrow. She was impressed that Lynette had hidden so much of it. She’d only noticed the eyelid, and a little beneath the eye. Lynette had to have practice. She didn’t realize she wasn’t breathing until she stopped when Lynette winced, and breathed some air into her empty lungs. “I’ve got most of it off,” Neferet reassured her, “does it hurt?”

Lynette shook her head, and blotted off the remaining makeup remover. “I bruise easily. It looks worse than it is.” It didn’t take her affinity to know that was a lie, but she just nodded. Arguing with her was just another way to alienate her, and Lynette needed someone to stand by her. She needed to not be alone. Neferet knew the feeling. She wouldn’t make her more isolated than she was.

“I’m going to start using a colour corrector. It’s going to feel a little cold,” Neferet warned, not wanting to touch her without her expecting it. She would treat Lynette like she’d have wanted, exactly a week earlier. She started slow, painting on yellow around the edges, and blurring it out into her skin, before she worked inwards. It made her sick. She wondered if whoever did it thought about her skin. The bruise was dark enough Neferet knew it was recent.

She wished she could make it disappear, rather than just paint over it. It looked convincing though, like the flesh drew the blood back in, disappearing into flesh toned paint. She wanted it to be true, wanted Lynette to wipe the makeup off and find the eye miraculously healed. She wanted it to have never been bruised. She wanted a lot of _nevers_ she knew she’d never have, that she doubted her roommate got either. She should never have known this kind of hurt.

Neferet made the world able to pretend it had done right by her.

Once she was satisfied with the concealer, she picked up a fluffier brush, and set it with a little bit of powder. Lynette didn’t flinch when this brush touched her—it barely touched. Then a spray, and like that, the illusion was set. It was perfect. Neferet could see one eyelid was slightly inflamed, but without looking for it, it was impossible to notice the bruise she’d erased. She looked at Lynette, who still had her eyes closed for a moment, really looked. She’d changed into some of Neferet’s jeans, and one of the House of Night sweaters, zipped high. It felt like it was hers.

She looked like a girl who’d learned to run. Neferet didn’t know what first gave her the impression, but it seemed right. She was thin, almost wiry, her hair still slightly damp. She travelled light. Left with two different shoes. She planned on leaving this House of Night. She knew how to run. Every muscle in her body was stiff like that was its natural state.

She was pretty. Her hair formed into little curls that fell to her shoulders. Her closed eyes looked almost at rest. She looked right, somehow, in her new life. Maybe she just looked like she didn’t have to run for a moment.

Neferet stopped her staring as quickly as she could when she realized she’d done it. “That usually lasts eight hours, so for an eye, I’d touch it up after six,” she knew that from her own mask—hiding the bags under her eyes from all the nights she didn’t sleep. “All the makeup is on the counter,” she let her know, “but I can touch it up, if you want. I’m not going to be in public for a little bit, so you know where you’ll find me.”

Lynette nodded, looking up at her, her blue eyes disconcerting. There was a person behind them, and Neferet was hyperaware. “Thanks,” she said, “for everything.”

It was what Neferet would have wanted. That and to be left alone. They moved back into the room, where Lynette picked the laptop back up, and wen’t back to looking up something, until Neferet heard a knock, and an off-key, “Rooooom service.” Camille had gotten better at letting her know what to expect. She appreciated that.

She got up and opened it, and Camille half-skipped in, setting down two plates of some sort of chicken, and giving her a hug. “They finally got your car here today!” She chirped. “The movers got here just after the cop left, so he didn’t even get to try to seize it, which is why it’s in my parking spot, and mine is on the street. Can’t take it if he doesn’t know whose car it is!’ She flipped Neferet the set of keys triumphantly.

Neferet laughed, “Wow, Camille, obstructing justice already. What _will_ your mother say?” She put on a face of mock outrage, and Camille laughed with her.

Neferet needed this. She needed to act like she used to be, and Camille was more than willing. She probably also didn’t want to think about it. She felt terrible enough about it already, and Neferet didn’t want her to feel guilty She was the only person, other than Mary from Chicago who she didn’t want to feel terrible. Camille, once’d recovered, straightened herself up as though her back was glued to a plank, and put on a nasal tone, “Camille Elcott, I always knew that Neferet was bad news. How _are_ you going to marry into money with a criminal record?”

Neferet laughed again, relieved that even in imitation of her mother, Camille refused to use the other name for her. She pretended not to know who that was the few times others had used it. After the hard conversation yesterday, She’d told her about Arthur and the detective, both getting the ‘I don’t know her’ routine. “I’ll let you know after the trial, maybe she’ll be delighted because Arthur seems to like criminality on me,” she quipped.

Camille shook her head, “maybe she’ll tell me to get a misdemeanour just to entice him. Think you’ll be willing to come, I don’t know, paint a building? Steal some chocolate?” and then looked past Neferet and stiffened. “Oh! Hey! I didn’t see your roommate there!” She blurted, giving Lynette a wave. She looked to Neferet, eyes wide, and a little apologetic. She’d mentioned the case in front of a stranger.

Neferet shrugged, “Lynette, this is Camille Elcott, the only person allowed to have known me earlier than last week,” she introduced, to which Camille took a dramatic bow—she really was acting more herself. “Camille, this is Lynette, my roommate. She just got here a couple hours ago.” She fudged the timeline a little, so Camille didn’t ask if she saw the cop. Lynette wouldn’t want to talk about him.

Lynette waved without leaving her bed, seeming a little stiff. Neferet wasn’t sure she knew what to do with Camille in the room. She seemed almost like she was caught in headlights, and didn’t know what to do. Neferet quickly ran the conversation a different direction, “but I think we’re interrupting—Lynette, did you still want that nap?” She asked, “the first day is always exhausting.”

Lynette looked relieved to be given a way out, “uh, yeah. That would be good. It was nice to meet you, Camille.” She went back to her computer, a hair more relaxed than she had been. Camille was probably a little much before they got settled in.

When Neferet and Camille left the room, Neferet heard the door lock behind her. Too much like her. She had to stop seeing so much of herself in everything Lynette did. Protecting herself almost cost her everything. She didn’t think she could handle doing it for someone else as well. She needed to distance herself enough she didn’t end up on the line again.

Camille smiled, “well she seems…” she started, biting her lip as though she didn’t want to say what she’d come up with. It seemed to be bothering her at least a little.

“Like a good roommate for me?” Neferet offered, seeing if it was the similarity she’d picked up. She didn’t want to go fish for it in Camille’s head. Somehow, it felt like it crossed a line to go in when she didn’t have to.

“I was going to say like you,” Camille admitted, “I’m…I pay more attention to stuff now, after… I missed a lot before,” she didn’t seem proud of it either. Their first night here was hard, and she’d felt as though she was from a different world. Neferet was past it, but glad Camille wanted to do better. “She seemed like she was ready to bolt… Is she having a rough time moving in?” She asked. Neferet knew answering yes would lead to Camille trying to help her, and that Lynette wanted to be gone soon.

She also hid that there were other ways they were similar, that Camille didn’t want to think about and she didn’t like to talk about, “that could also have been me. She had definitely heard _something_ about the situation before she got there.” She omitted that it was from the cop, and Lynette didn’t buy it. It was a rational circumstance for anxiety, and it would hide the parallels a bit.

Camille cringed, “ _why_ did the High Priestess give you a roommate _now?_ Like, it’s been two days, and I think three of the girls down the hall all live alone. If Liv wouldn’t have minded a lot, I’d have asked her if Lynette and I could swap, cause you know me.” She folded her arms, as though she intended to give the high priestess herself a piece of her mind. Neferet cracked a smile.

After some thought, she shook her head “I think the High Priestess did it so the cops can talk to someone who sees me, and figure out if I’m sane. Wouldn’t shock me if she thought she was doing me a favour,” she offered.

Camille shook her head. “This is insane. You were protecting yourself,” she insisted, her voice rising a bit. She didn’t like it when people challenged that. Half because with what she knew, Neferet knew she wanted the bastard dead, and half because she was an accessory to murder if Neferet had planned to do it. She’d make sure they knew Camille was innocent.

“I know,” was all she said back.

Camille was quiet for a bit, while they walked—not to her room, but outside, and Neferet pulled up the hood on her jacket. “So, uh, I can’t bring you dinner on Thursday,” she said, a little hesitant, “I got invited to the Dark Daughters, because, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but they, uh, lost a few. Like in fast succession. They… they’re at a loss, so they’ve brought on like, a lot of us, to see who wants in.”

It didn’t surprise her that Camille was among them. She was good at meeting people, and making friends. People pretty much immediately liked her. “By Thursday, I’ll be up for getting my own food. I just don’t want people to see me, you know? Goddess knows what they think, and with the amount _some people_ poke around, there’s probably no one who doesn’t know,” Neferet lamented. She wasn’t excited to hearing everyone think about her being some kind of murderer.

Camille cringed, “Yeah. I’m—I mostly tell ‘em that you were a good person, and you needed to protect yourself, and I don’t think they need any more info than that. So you know, people are asking, but no one knows _anything.”_ She assured her, pausing, before admitting, “There’s rumours, and some of them are…close. No one knows how he was related to you.” She actually stopped walking, and seemed to plant herself in place in defiance. “If anyone is tactless enough to ask you, I swear to the goddess, I _will_ fight them. And then I’ll start a creative enough rumour about them that no one remembers this.”

Neferet laughed, “the infamous Camille stories. I forgot how effective those were.” They resumed walking, Neferet remembering with some extent of fondness the tales Camille used to get away with telling. Eve and Lizzy stole their dresses for the winter formal. Steven was gay, and having a torrid affair with a fledgling guy. Miranda’s dad was totally making eyes at her mom. None of it was ever true, but going along for the ride made it somehow fun. The Camille stories on her weren’t. Some of them got too close. Some of them made it sound like she was getting married because Arthur (or someone else) had knocked her up. Camille hadn’t known what she was doing.

Camille took a mock-bow, “I learned from my mom, who, speaking of which, has called four times. I’ve been in class, but I can update you on what she told them,” she offered, “and I can do damage control, if I know what she said. Next time he questions me, I can remind him that my mom was super not cool with you, and definitely tells her own stories.”

Neferet nodded, “I’d appreciate that. I’ve heard the stuff she’d say to my face,” like the time she told her, a month or so after her mother died, that the only man in her future was her father, and she was practically married to the household. “I just don’t want her to tell that cop that I burned ants as a kid, or…” she trailed off. She didn’t want to say what she was thinking. Mrs Elcott wasn’t above it.

Camille changed the subject, “Whatever. If you need character witnesses, you should also be my plus one for Dark Daughters. Be there all pretty, and all with the worshipping of the Goddess, and seem really, really normal, and they’re apparently pretty Ride or Die.” Neferet considered it. She hated the idea of being around them, but she _could_ read them, and set up some impressions. Belonging to a group made her look well-adjusted.

Part of her wanted it just because it was a place to belong. There was loyalty. There were people—whatever her feelings on trust, it looked good. “Yeah. That sounds good. You’ll be there, so I won’t be completely adrift.” She meant that. Camille was her rock right now—she was normal. And she’d make Neferet look normal, the way they talked.

Camille smiled, “thanks,” she said, looking at her for a long time, like there was more to it than that, “I mean, for the thinking that, but also for the letting me in, after I caused… and after everything else I did. I really like being friends again,” she admitted, “I missed you, when we were feuding.”

Neferet was entirely too truthful when she agreed, “I’m glad we’re friends too.”

When she returned to the room, Neferet knocked, “just me!” She called through the door, before unlocking it. Lynette still looked at the door when it opened, but didn’t seem to startle. Neferet hung her coat up, and picked up the food she and Camille had forgotten, digging into the chicken.

“I got dinner…” Lynette started, sounding hesitant, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but there’s…talk.” She didn’t look at neferet, and her shoulders were raised, as though she expected Neferet to yell. Perhaps as though she expected violence. She looked as though she was ready once again to run.

Neferet sighed, “I’m going to guess at least a couple people tried to save you from our room. Or told you I was dangerous,” she theorized. She knew they didn’t know enough to understand, and expected this meant Camille was going to be making lots of revenge-based Camille Stories to disrupt the talk. Especially once she started going to class, and leaving her room.

Lynette let out a shaky laugh. “My mom’s ex’s daughter was more concerned about you than any of the bullshit that happened when our parents split,” she shrugged. “It seems mostly like a lot of gossip. Would you rather hear what I’ve heard, or what I think happened?”

Neferet responded almost instantly, “both. I want to know what that cop is going to hear from them, and why you don’t fear me. Or seem to.” She amended that—Lynette didn’t seem more tense around her than she was with Camille, and she’d trusted her with her eye. She’d tried on clothes with her. It felt like there was some kind of trust there, but she could have been reading into it.

“Well, uh, mostly people are going with the _‘always knew there was something off about her’_ story, where you didn’t talk to anyone, someone swears you got into a fight in the hallway, and that kind of thing. There’s a lot of theories about why you were at a hotel, and why you killed some banker. Most of them are…not charitable.”

Neferet wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what they thought. Hotel, pretty girl, dead rich guy added to a particular scenario she didn’t want them to imagine. She’d be hearing it soon enough anyway. It wasn’t helpful right now. “And you?” She asked, trying to move forward, see what her roommate got that they didn’t.

Lynette didn’t look at her, “you’re getting an inheritance. You changed your name and only Camille is allowed to know you past last week. You hate Chicago. There are bruises on your throat. I don’t know how you two were related, but I’m guessing by blood. I’m guessing, if Chicago didn’t actively throw fuel on fires, they didn’t do anything to step in either. And…I’m guessing you were protecting yourself when he died.” It was merciful of her not to be more specific—a kind of consideration Neferet wondered if she’d learned from experience.

“That’s pretty much exactly what happened,” she replied, “he was my father. He travelled up to _visit.”_ Her tone made clear that it wasn’t a regular social visit. She didn’t want to say more. It still hurt.

Lynette nodded, looking as though she was a little far away, like she wasn’t really here in front of Neferet. “Be careful with that cop. He’ll want to arrest you for surviving,” she warned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoopsie. I was sucked into my other fics/other fantoms hard core. I'm going to Shamelessly Self promote here, but for more Neferet fic go to:  
> -I Can't Undress Your Heart- for something lighthearted  
> -To The End (even if it's tonight)- if you got ripped off by Found's Ending  
> -Are You Still Mine?- if you didn't think the imprint scene was gay, or emotionally harrowing enough
> 
> If you're into seeing characters you may never have met before struggle in the other verse, there's also To Deny The Stars (Fire and Powder) which features my fave buffy characters as vampyres. 
> 
> Also, I swear, I will update again sooner than this update came.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I'm working on finding her voice. this whole thing is like top 10 photos taken before disaster. 
> 
> the full line of the lyrics is "once was I made of glass/long ago before I cracked" which I think really describes the disconcerting, things are going to go to shit feeling this chapter leaves. 
> 
> Please note, the next chapter picks up on the way to the house of night, shortly AFTER she goes to Arthur and that shit hits the fan. There is no chapter written the night of may 1st that talks about what happened when she was assaulted. The how isn't what matters in this fic. The impact on her is.


End file.
